Welcome to Nobody Told Me.

I'm Laura Owens.

And I'm Jan Black.

And on this episode, we'll explore a question.

Many of us have probably pondered, but relatively few of us have experienced.

What's it like to fall in love with someone in prison? Our guest, journalist Elizabeth Greenwood,

spent five years following the ups and downs of five couples who met during incarceration.

She's written about it in the new book, Love Lockdown, Dating, Sex, and Marriage

in America's Prison System. The book profiles people who took the greatest leap of faith to

develop a relationship in an environment that is by design meant to keep love out. Elizabeth,

we thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.

What is it about this that intrigued you? Oh, gosh, it's so interesting. I think it's one of

those ideas we've all heard a little bit about whether it's standing in line at the supermarket

and seeing the tabloids about the women who know, women who wrote Scott Peterson when he was on

trial for murdering his pregnant wife. And it just sounds kind of so far out there. So I like a lot of

people knew about the kind of most extreme iteration of this phenomenon. But in my prior

reporting, I'd interviewed people in prison and they would tell me

sometimes that they would get letters from perfect strangers who were interested in them.

And they had kind of developed their own relationships during their incarceration. So I was just

completely fascinated with what that was, what that was all about. And how do you make a

relationship work when, you know, by very design, you're kept separate and you're kept apart from

one another. So what does a relationship look like with someone who's in prison?

...