The Wardens

By: Clark Howard

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Synopsis: In this multigenerational novel Clark Howard depicts nearly a hundred years in the life of an American prison family. It is a story as extraordinary as the family matriarch herself, an iron-willed woman who lived to be ninety-five and left her mark on every generation that followed her. To convict and keeper alike, Drusilla Foyle Van Hawn Niles Ironwood was a living legend, wife of three wardens, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother of three others. She was a true "lifer"; they called her the Mistress of Prison Hill. Drusilla Ironwood lived seventy-seven years behind the walls. Through prison riots and politics, executions and escapes, and the sudden untimely death of the men she loved, she was witness to--and often a force behind--the development of American penology. Her life was prison history, from frontier chain gang to modern penitentiary. This passionate, sometimes willful woman saw a prison spawn a city--and kept the secret that a convict might have spawned one of her own sons. From an arranged marriage as a young farm girl, she became the confidante of governors and senators. Her word could give a man a new beginning on parole--or keep him in lockup for life.

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