Marking Time : Letters from Jean Harris to Shana Alexander

Letters from convicted murderess Jean Harris--serving time in prison for the killing of Dr. Herman Tarnower--to journalist Shana Alexander reveal her most intimate thoughts and a harrowing picture of life in prison

During her imprisonment for the 1980 killing of her lover, Dr. Herman Tarnower, Harris has received strong support from Shana Alexander, her friend and biographer ( Very Much a Lady ). The two met during the trial and began corresponding after Harris was sent to the New York State Bedford Correctional Facility. According to the prisoner's testimony in this collection and in her previous accounts ( Stranger in Two Worlds ; They Always Call Us Ladies ), Bedford debases inmates rather then encouraging them to salvage their lives. Harris helps with a program teaching mothers to care for their children and to oversee their education. Although she notes that her egocentricity keeps the focus on her own problems, readers will praise Harris's effort here to alert the public to needed reforms at Bedford, a so-called country-club prison. First serial to Ladies Home Journal.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Harris's friendship with Shana Alexander began at her trial for the murder of Herman Tarnower when Alexander was writing Very Much a Lady ( LJ 1/83). Over the years of her imprisonment (she's serving a 15-year-to-life sentence), Harris used her correspondence with Alexander as a "steam vent," sharing her "delight in the random wisdom one hears in here from time to time" and expressing her "anger at the meanness and stupidity that are the constant drip, drip, drip of prison." As a result, this collection of letters, dating from January 1989 to February 1991, is not so much a reflection of Harris's friendship with Alexander as it is a "picture of prison life, as told from one woman to another woman." As in her previous books, Stranger in Two Worlds ( LJ 9/1/86) and "They Always Call Us Ladies"; Stories from Prison ( LJ 10/1/88), Harris describes with eloquence and ironic wit the vindictive cruelty, the petty small-mindedness, the rare joyous moments, and the human tragedies that are found in a woman's prison. Strongly recommended for all collections. First serial to Ladies Home Journal .--Ed.
- Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.