Present day prison novels and memoirs are loaded with violence and assault. The convicts must band together for survival against rival gangs and their keepers. So I was particularly interested to read Odlum’s novel, first published in 1936, for comparison. It presents a somewhat more charitable view of life inside, at least as far as an ever-present threat of sexual assault. But hold on. As revealed in David Rachels’ well researched introduction, the novel went through several heavy rewrites over its development. “The publisher told Odlum to remove all ‘obscenity’ and ‘perversion,’ which included references to sex criminals and homosexuality.”
Odlum had served several stints in Minnesota State Prison for writing bad checks and other swindling offensives, so he knew all about prison life first-hand. In his novel, the convicts are the heroes and the screws and management are the sadistic villains.
Newspaperman Frank Ross is set-up to take a bum rap by a powerful political machine. He is deemed responsible for a fatale car wreck while driving dead-drunk. His trial is swift, and he finds himself facing up to twenty years in Stoney Point prison.
His struggle to gain a new trial to prove his innocence is the main thread of the story, pursued by his wife and other colleagues at the Mountain Record newspaper where he worked, and by fellow-inmate Stacey, a powerful gangster with plenty of pull on the outside.
Much of the novel depicts the daily prison life, its harsh conditions, and man’s inhumanity to man. The controlling rules are nearly intolerable and the slightest infraction triggers a suspension of all “privileges” or worse—solitary confinement in the hole, where a man subsides on bread and water with no cot and only a bucket for his latrine.
If you’ve a fascination of prison life, Each Dawn I Die presents an unforgettable deep-dive into doing time, where men are so desperate for a piece of reality they adopt cockroaches as pets and long for escapes that can’t possibly succeed.
In real life, Odlum lost more than he won, but his debut novel rose above this failings and delivers a high-stakes mystery loaded with atmosphere, tension, and action.
