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"  Piper Kerman majored in theater at Smith College and graduated in the recession year of 1992. So the boho bisexual Bostonian stuck around Northampton, waiting tables and spinning her wheels. Then she got involved with Nora Jansen, who suddenly acquired a lot of money, and before she knew it, Kerman was crisscrossing the globe with her drug-trafficking girlfriend and even, just once, running drug money herself on a trip from Chicago to Brussels.  After four months, though, Kerman realized that she was in an underworld way over her head, so she left Nora for San Francisco, got a job in TV production, met a nice Jewish boy named Larry, and settled down. In 1998, they moved to New York City to pursue their careers. Then, one May afternoon, the doorbell rang at their West Village walk-up. Who could that be? &amp;quot;Miss Kerman? It&amp;#039;s officers Maloney and Wong.&amp;quot; Apparently, Nora had been snared. Thus began a glacially slow and implacable legal journey toward Kerman&amp;#039;s 13-month stretch in Danbury, Connecticut&amp;#039;s federal prison. There, she consorted (but chastely, between regular visits from the nobly loyal Larry) with women from all the walks of life that a nice Smith girl would never ordinarily travel.  Kerman&amp;#039;s memoir, Orange Is the New Black (Spiegel &amp;amp;amp; Grau), reads like an estrogen-drenched version of Dostoevsky&amp;#039;s The House of the Dead, as our gentlewoman protagonist becomes exalted by her exposure to the beautiful souls of trannie divas, Latina grandmothers, a West Indian roommate, even a few politicals\u2014radical pacifists and nuns who managed against all odds to run afoul of the U.S. penal code (along with, of course, a good few of the truly damned). It&amp;#039;s a fantastic tale from the Siberia of America&amp;#039;s war on drugs and is a rippingly fun read right down to the unexpected moment of closure that arrives before Kerman goes home to Larry for good. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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