STORIES FROM THE SHERIFF'S DAUGHTER

Inspired by the author’s childhood, this coming-of-age novel chronicles a girl’s experiences growing up in a home attached to a county jail.

It’s 1956 in Caldwell, Texas, and the new sheriff and his family have just moved into the county jailhouse. The sheriff’s daughter is 9 years old, and she is the novel’s narrator and protagonist. She and her two older brothers (Walter and Bill) grew up on the family dairy farm, and she is excited to be living in town for the first time, where she can walk to school and the movie theater by herself. Readers meet her as she is waiting with anticipation to catch a glimpse of an arrested “murderer,” who is “on his way to our jail,” her first real-life bad guy. Envisioning the visage of a Western desperado, she is shocked to spot the clean-cut, well-dressed teenager in handcuffs—crying (“I never expected to see a prisoner cry”). Thus begins a 14-year story with a strong cast in which the narrator (her father calls her Dolly) is exposed to the seamy underbelly of the human condition. Dolly’s father, her hero, is a large man with both strength and gentleness, his facial expressions frequently clouded with an undefined, underlying sadness. And her mother, despite concerns about raising her young brood across the carport from criminals, is a compassionate listener to the prisoners’ tales of woe as she prepares their three meals a day, her eyes often filling with tears. Stories of Dolly’s interactions with the prisoners, who often yell through their barred windows bemoaning the wrong turns and tragedies that landed them in the county jail, skillfully alternate with tales about her family and her assorted youthful hijinks with siblings and friends. And Buckley’s portrayal of Caldwell, where she was raised, carries the easy cadence of small-town Texas during the 1950s and ’60s, powerfully conveying the period’s details and atmosphere.

A warmhearted tale with vivid 20th-century imagery and characters who leap off the page.