cover image Marking Time: Letters from Jean Harris to Shana Alexander

Marking Time: Letters from Jean Harris to Shana Alexander

Jean Harris. Scribner Book Company, $19.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-684-19367-0

During her imprisonment for the 1980 killing of her lover, Dr. Herman Tarnower, Harris has received strong support from Shana Alexander, her friend and biographer ( Very Much a Lady ). The two met during the trial and began corresponding after Harris was sent to the New York State Bedford Correctional Facility. According to the prisoner's testimony in this collection and in her previous accounts ( Stranger in Two Worlds ; They Always Call Us Ladies ), Bedford debases inmates rather then encouraging them to salvage their lives. Harris helps with a program teaching mothers to care for their children and to oversee their education. Although she notes that her egocentricity keeps the focus on her own problems, readers will praise Harris's effort here to alert the public to needed reforms at Bedford, a so-called country-club prison. First serial to Ladies Home Journal. (Jan.)