Karen E Black

From the Chrysalis Karen E Black

Part love story, part prison break, "From the Chrysalis" is a fictionalized account of the deadliest event in Canadian penal history, the Kingston Penitentiary Riot of April 1971. Liza's bad-boy cousin, the handsome, magnetic D'Arcy "Dace" Devereux is nothing but trouble. Falling in love with him can only make things worse. Especially for a girl who knows more about books and monarch butterflies than she does men. The cousins' mutual infatuation flares into an obsession long before Liza is out of her teens. Even when Dace is arrested and sent to jail, their feelings don't change. When she's old enough, Liza enrolls in a local university to be closer to him, but a prison riot breaks out and Dace is forced to make decisions that will jeopardize both their relationship and his life. He's always been loyal to his old buddies-too loyal some say. The cousins spend one wonderful summer together when he's briefly paroled, but Dace is still drawn to trouble like the monarchs down to Mexico. In the end, nobody-not the biker gangs, the authorities or Dace's own demons-is going to let him go. The only way they can both break out and fly free is if Liza walks away. But how can she leave him when he has become her whole life? "From the Chrysalis" is a taut novel of romance and survival against all odds, set in the shifting political and moral background of the early seventies.