Review: After The Night by Rachel Dax
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 22, 2012
"After the Night", written by Rachel Dax, was the first book ever put on my new Kindle.  It is still on there and recently I had the chance to re-read it.  It will be staying on my Kindle to be read again in the future.  It is that good.Young nurse, Leah Webster, is thrust into a world strange and foreign to her. Cool, remote Officer Jean MacFarlane is assigned to show her the women's prison where she will be working.  First impressions are not always what they seem, though, and Leah soon discovers that `Mac', as she is known to some of the prisoners, is a kind and fair overseer of the prisoners in her care.  The cold, stone walls of the prison have seen much tragedy, as has Officer Jean MacFarlane, but Leah's joining of the staff provides a chance at healing and change for those around her. Leah, herself, learns to see the world much differently as a result of her interaction with the personalities she meets.  While the bars and doors of an institution cannot constrain love, the social mores of the time can be crueler than any locked cell.Ms. Dax successfully captures the mood and temperament, not only of the times it covers, but also of what it was like for women in the British penal system of the 1960's.The need to be discreet in our not too distant past is made palpable by Ms. Dax's economy of words and her spot-on dialogue.  The restrictive mood of the prison and of life outside the prison was viscerally felt while reading this story.  Rachel's research into her subject matter is impeccable. Personalities come alive, and the weaving together of the storyline's threads is flawless.Romantic scenes can be difficult to write, so I've been told, but Ms. Dax handles them with just the right amount of `heat'.  The main characters' growing attraction to each other is well paced and believable.  And the drama of life both inside and outside the prison makes for a compelling read.I highly recommend "After the Night" for your Kindle collection. You, too, may want to keep it on there to be read more than once.After The Night