30 Years Behind Bars: Trials of a Prison Doctor shares your experiences working in the prison system in Nevada, the challenges you faced, and the changes you want to help make happen. Why was this an important book for you to write?

I decided to write my memoir because I wanted the outside world to see the prison system through the eyes of someone oriented and trained to diagnose and heal versus the perspective of a captive or a captor. When I retired from the prison after 30 years, it was because the leadership had swung to what I considered the dark side. The side that was oriented toward punishment vs. programs, harm vs. healing, and disrupting what was working vs. deciding and supporting what worked. When I left, I knew I had to look at my journals plus the writings of the inmates and put together the story of how, what, and why I stayed 30 years in the prison and what I would do next.

I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?

The hardest thing for me to write about was when I was taken hostage in the prison, assaulted, raped, and got out when the SWAT team threw in the concussion grenade and killed the inmate a few feet from me. It was hard because when I asked my husband when I was writing my book how he felt when that hostage event happened he looked at me and said, ’That’s the first time you’ve asked me how I felt.’ It was like getting hit in the gut. That event occurred in 1989, and it was 2017 when I asked him. It made me realize that in 1989 when it happened on October Friday the 13th, I was just focused on going back to work on Monday. I was thinking about my own psyche, not his.

Your experiences are unique and give you a first-hand perspective on the issues involving the correctional institution in the United States. How do you hope your story will help advocate for change within the prison system?

I think that I am that type of unique voice that can tell true powerful stories that affect how the public looks at the prison system. I was naive like a lot of people in the US who don’t have an experience with prison, but I ended up straddling two diametrically different forces in the prison, that of inmates and custody, and survived. People like stories where the underdog succeeds and being a young, blonde female married to a black man and thrown into prison to be a doctor by the National Health Service Corps fits that type of story.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from your story?

To be curious about the criminal justice system and any system that makes money out of punishment and harming others vs. investing in prevention and other tactics to keep society safer.

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