In Brief: Down to the Bone: A Jail, a Journey, Four Women

By Clémence Overall. Mud Brick Press, 2024. 350 pages. $29.99/hardcover; $23.95/paperback; $3.99/eBook.

This memoir by Clémence Overall opens with her harrowing account of when, while a student in Guatemala doing archaeological research, she was arrested and framed for drug possession. The arresting officers and the “judge” offer her freedom in exchange for sex acts. While incarcerated in Guatemala, the author meets a group of Mayan women who were imprisoned after soldiers massacred the men of their village and burned the buildings to the ground. She connects with them over shared stories, and the older ladies pray for her and offer expressions of care as she is released.

When Overall returns to the United States, memories of her fellow prisoners haunt her. She decides to travel to Haiti and Guatemala, as well as Washington, D.C., to collect stories of women’s lives. The resulting work includes precise and illuminating details about the inner strength of women facing poverty and racist oppression.

The book documents the sustaining Christian faith of an Indigenous Mayan woman named “Teresa.” Teresa’s connection to God helps her maintain her dignity when her boss demeans her with racist insults.

She was reacting to something beyond the modern church that I knew. Instead, it was as if she were living in the era where early Christians showed love in the face of hatred and when slapped, they simply turned the other cheek; when it was believed that the meek shall inherit the earth. Her god was a god that loved Mayans, fallen women, illegitimate children. It wasn’t just being a Mayan that gave her such a sense of self, but it was also her faith.

The author credits Quakers around the world for supporting the book spiritually, financially, and by offering hospitality. Friends seeking a deeper understanding of the faith lives of women in adverse circumstances will find it compelling and enlightening.

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Sharlee DiMenichi is staff writer for Friends Journal