Synopses & Reviews
This striking debut novel is an intensely powerful story of imprisonment, both behind walls and within the personal confines of human relationships.
Shepherdsville, East Texas, is a town defined--architecturally, financially, and socially--by its state penitentiaries, among them the bleak Hope Prison Farm. It's a town where virtually every inhabitant is either an inmate or a prison employee, a town where crime literally pays.
Shepherdsville's two most famous citizens are Sonny Hope, its larger-than-life prison director, and Hadrian Coleman, its most notorious convict. Their friendship since boyhood has followed a pattern of mutual dependence, keeping them at once in collusion and on opposite sides of the law. At age fifteen, introspective and emotionally vulnerable, Hadrian killed a man and was sentenced to fifty years at Hope Farm. However, twenty years later, he achieves the unthinkable and escapes from the prison.
After years of life on the run, he's summoned back to Shepherdsville to receive a full governor's pardon secured by Sonny, who now runs the prison and, by extension, the town. Hadrian knows that Sonny's motives are not entirely clean, that this is a favor that will require something in return. When the nature of that payment is finally made clear, he must determine who really owes what to whom and whether carrying out Sonny's demand will result in a lifetime spent in his power. As Hadrian vacillates between loyalty to his friend and the struggle to do right, he is pulled toward a final showdown with Sonny--a crisis that will not only change the lives of the two men but also finally free Hadrian from Shepherdsville and from his past.
Hadrian's Walls won the Steven Turner Award, given by The Texas Institute of Letters for the best first work of fiction.
Review
"In his debut novel, Robert Draper deftly steers his reader off the main highways and deep into the red-dirt cotton fields and the dark pine forests that lie north of Houston, Texas to visit a company town where incarceration is the company business. Shepherdsville (standing in for Huntsville), Texas is the home of the state prison system bureaucracy and many of its notorious penitentiaries. The compelling story skips around the lives of two small-town boys who grew up together and remain bound to each other in ways that they do not imagine. One would become the town's top prison boss; the other would become the prison's only successful escapee. It is a story of loyalty, lies, love, and legacies among fathers, sons, and best friends. Those who have enjoyed the crisp writing and engaging character descriptions from Draper's many pieces in Texas Monthly and GQ magazine will not be disappointed by his first novel. Draper starts off wordy in the first chapter (would anybody in North Texas really describe someone as 'Mister Loquacious'?); but he quickly recovers his sense of economy and delivers a clear winner." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
About the Author
Robert Draper spent years as an editor and writer at Texas Monthly before moving to his current position as staff writer for GQ magazine. A lifelong Texan, he lives in Austin with his wife, Meg Littleton.