In 2011, novelist Tina Welling began teaching journaling workshops for the mostly male inmates at the Teton County Jail in Jackson, Wyoming. What began as a little-understood impulse on her part became a meaningful journey with surprising results.

Welling was floored by how much she had in common with the incarcerated: “It’s just that they had been arrested and I had not.” They talked and wrote about self-esteem, anger, forgiveness, compassion, personal power, codependency. She gave the men one hour a week to explore their inner lives; they gave her an unprecedented experience of intimacy and vulnerability.

Replete with the kind of gorgeous writing for which Welling is acclaimed, Tuesdays in Jail is part memoir, part riveting exploration of individual inmates’ lives and challenges, and an enlightening and insightful examination of American incarceration.