I look around at framed certificates and commendations on her walls because I don’t want to look at her looking at that photograph, uncertain why it’s bothering me so much. Maybe it’s harder to see Jack through a stranger’s eyes. Warden of the Year. Outstanding Merit. Distinguished Service Award. Meritorious Service Award, Continuing Excellence. Supervisor of the Month.Some of them she’s won more than once, and she has a bachelor’s degree cum laude from Spalding University in Kentucky, but she doesn’t sound like a native, more like Louisiana, and I ask her where she’s from.

“Mississippi, originally,” she says. “My father was the superintendent of the state penitentiary there, and I spent my early years on twenty thousand acres of delta land as flat as a pancake, with soybeans and cotton that the inmates farmed. Then he got hired by Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, more farmland far away from civilization, and I lived right there on the grounds, which might seem strange. But I didn’t mind living in the lap of my father’s work. Amazing what you get used to as if it’s normal. It was his recommendation that the GPFW be built out here in the middle of scrubland and swamps, and that the women take care of it and cost the taxpayers as little as possible. I guess you could say that prisons are in my blood.”

“Your father worked here at some point?”

“No, he never did.” She smiles ironically. “I can’t imagine my father overseeing two thousand women. He would have been a bit bored with that, although some of them are a whole lot worse than the men. He was sort of like Arnold Palmer giving advice about golf-course design, no one better, depending on your vision, and he was progressive. A number of correctional institutions called upon him for advice. Angola, for example, has a rodeo stadium, a newspaper, and a radio station. Some of the inmates are celebrated rodeo riders and experts in leather, metal, and woodworking design that they’re allowed to sell for their own profit.” She doesn’t say all this as if she necessarily thinks it’s a good thing. “My worry about these cases you have up north is did they get everyone involved?”