At the age of eighteen, a young man is convicted for the murder of a woman during a robbery and sent to a high security prison. Twenty-five years later, he is finally set free, a changed man painfully entering a changed world. He emerges into a society that has grown unfamiliar and corrupt, his many years inside prison leaving him unprepared for the world beyond the gates. Unsure of the new rules of society, he is subject to the hidden motivations of those around him, the plans that his friends and family may or may not have for him. This is a darkly compelling story of how one man struggles to mend the gap that his crime and incarceration have torn in his life, coming to grips with the hole gouged in his personal universe.

A Hole in the Universe © 2004 Mary McGarry Morris. Recorded by arrangement with Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency.

Mary McGarry Morris is the author of VANISHED, nominated for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award; A DANGEROUS WOMAN, chosen by TIME magazine as one the "Five Best Novels of the Year" and made into a major motion picture; and SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME, an Oprah Book Club selection and a CBS television movie; and FIONA RANGE. She lives in Massachusetts.