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A powerful and wrenchingly intimate memoir about the formidable challenge of raising a family separated by prison walls and how we can fight back against a broken byzantine system.Keeonna and Jason met as young teens. Only fourteen, Keeonna had never had a boyfriend before, dreamed of attending Spelman to become an obstetrician, and thought she was "grown." Within a year she was pregnant, and Jason was in prison, convicted of a carjacking and sentenced to twenty-two years. Overnight Keeonna had become a "mainline mama," a parent facing the impossible task of raising a child - while still growing up herself - with an incarcerated partner.In this devastating and triumphant memoir, Keeonna recalls her harrowing journey as a Mainline Mama, from learning to overcome the exhausting difficulties of navigating the carceral system in the United States, to transforming herself into an advocate for other women like her - the predominantly Black and brown women left behind to pick up the pieces of their families and fractured lives.