“I started reading this book and couldn’t stop…[Love Lockdown is] a clear-eyed, compassionate look at prison love stories, and I found every relationship riveting.”—Lisa Taddeo, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Three Women

An evocative and gripping investigative look into romantic relationships between incarcerated people and their spouses on the outside from the author of the “mesmerizing” (Elle) Playing Dead.

What is it like to fall in love with someone in prison?

Over the course of five years, Elizabeth Greenwood followed the ups and downs of five couples who met during incarceration. In Love Lockdown, she pulls back the curtain on the lives of the husbands and wives supporting some of the 2.3 million people in prisons around the United States. In the vein of Modern Love, this book shines a light on how these relationships reflect the desire and delusion we all experience in our romantic pairings.

Love Lockdown infiltrates spaces many of us have only heard whispers of—from conjugal visits to prison weddings to relationships between the incarcerated themselves. A fascinating and unputdownable deep-dive from the “quirky, engaging, and surprisingly uplifting” (Eric Weiner, New York Times bestselling author) journalist Elizabeth Greenwood, Love Lockdown will change the way you look at the American prison system and perhaps relationships in general. “With deep empathy, wisdom and an irrepressible sense of humor that finds lightness even in the darkest places, Liz Greenwood has brought her journalistic brilliance to bear on relationships forged under the most extreme circumstances imaginable. This is a must-read for anyone who cares about the nature of love, both in prison and out.”
—Emily Gould, author of Perfect Tunes