AustLit

'How far would you go for love? Some women commit crimes to help their lovers, while others spend years on the run. Tanya Levin gave up her career as a prison social worker to pursue romance with an inmate. From her first day over on the visitors' side of the fence, she became a crimwife. Some women make the leap in the chaos of their loved one's arrest; others, like Levin, choose a relationship knowing the stakes. Crimwife is a glimpse inside a secret and brutal world, where convicted men live by unwritten codes and expect their women to do the same.

'In her five years as a crimwife, Levin met women of all ages and backgrounds who lived behind invisible bars, stuck in the house awaiting daily six-minute phone calls. She became curious about their different paths. How did they fall for a bad boy? How did they cope with their partner locked up? What made them stay - or finally walk away? In Crimwife, she tells their stories, and her own, with the honesty, black humour and insight that can only come from experience. (From the publisher's website.)