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Bonnie Lou Barnes becomes Bonnie Lou Stuck when she marries her high school sweetheart, Bill, in 1965. But a suitor's charm masks a husband's brutal possessiveness, as Bonnie becomes nothing more than one among the trappings of success that Bill, an upwardly mobile career soldier, craves. She can't meet his expectations as a wife or housekeeper, and his verbal and physical cruelty erodes her sense of self for years. Repeated tours in Vietnam and other deployments for him force Bonnie to such a degree of self-reliance that she seeks a divorce after fifteen years. Freed from one prison, she soon opts to volunteer as a literacy teacher at another. Here she meets Gregory Oliver, innocent of the murder for which he's serving a life sentence. Romance blossoms as Bonnie embarks on fourteen years of tenacious struggle to free Gregory and find spiritual liberty from her painful past.
Oliver's narrative is one of numerous kinds of freedom. Belief in herself helps her overcome physical and academic obstacles as a child. Even her first husband's abuse serves to toughen her as she asserts her independence during his frequent absences. Her eventual strong religious conviction frees her to live daringly, take risks, and follow what she sees as God's plan for her life. This memoir views convicted criminals, even murderers, as human beings of infinite worth. Interracial marriage to an incarcerated person in the South presents two sets of challenges which Oliver describes with a gentleness that her uncomplaining and devoutly Christian second husband, Gregory, has undoubtedly influenced. The book ends with an appendix that describes the crime of which Gregory was convicted. Battered spouses, especially women, may find Oliver's account inspiring, as might those romantically involved with a wrongly convicted prisoner.