Jenni Fagan

Like everyone else in the Panopticon, 15-year-old Anais Hendricks has been in and out of foster care practically since birth. "[B]orn in a nuthouse to nobody that was ever seen again," she had her only successful foster placement with a prostitute later stabbed to death (Anais found the body). She's been sent to this facility, where the inmates are under constant surveillance, because she had a bad history with a policewoman who has been bludgeoned...

These poems are alive with electricity, pulsating with a frequency that vibrates throughout. In a journey from there to here, The Bone Library examines and interprets all of human life. Throughout the collection Jenni Fagan responds to broader themes of identity, of place, of love and the unloved. Written in the old Dick Vet Bone Library during the author's time as writer-in-residence there, this is a vivid exploration that is honest and searching...

Raised in foster care from birth and moved through twenty-three placements before she even turned seven, Anais has been let down by just about every adult she has ever met. Now fifteen, she is a counterculture outlaw -- and, though she cannot remember what happened, may be responsible for a policewoman's death. She is sent to the Panopticon, a home for chronic young offenders. There she finds a sense of belonging among the residents -- they form intense...