Description: Prisoners dramatizes the impact of unresolved crimes of the past on the lives of several families in the Tidewater region in Maryland. Central to the novel is the story of Kiet, a runaway teenage orphan from Vietnam who is seeking her Black father and whose flight impinges upon the lives of the other characters, many of them Vietnam War veterans. She is pursued by the white sheriff Alex and his Black deputy Russell who belong to the same Hallam family tree with its double roots of privilege and oppression; befriended by Baxter, a blind Black Vietnam War veteran; and abused by Hiram Johns, the last member of an respected old family gone to seed. The Hallam family history is recreated through an archeological dig at the site of a Union prison camp where Civil War atrocities took place. The drama of the interlinking stories illuminates the 'seepage of history' and examines the "crimes of war and family and skin". Karlin unpeels their histories like an onion, layer after layer, until the violent climax, and a denouement that offers understanding, hope, and reconciliation.

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