Barely out of his twenties, Chester Hines knows the score. He's just another bug crawling through the streets of Detroit, waiting to be squashed under the heel of a system meant to keep a brother down. But with his old lady on his back, his only options are on the wrong side of the law. He didn't need a fortune-teller to tell him that sooner or later he'd end up in a system more brutal than the one that forced him there.

Prison life is raw. But it's the only life Chester's got. Against all odds, he and his crew will forge a brotherhood in hell. Together they'll scratch and claw their way day by day, suffering unimaginable abuse, betrayal, and pure, uncut hopelessness-or die trying.