About this ebook
Desiree Schulman is home from federal prison—almost.
When Des returns to Washington, DC under "conditional release," she wants three things: to repair her relationships, to practice humility, and to stay out of prison. So she reconnects with her local sadomasochists' group, and pursues an elusive ex. She takes a state-mandated job cleaning (and judging) other people's houses, flings a few prayers at whatever Higher Power might be listening, and spends her group therapy trying to justify her happy childhood to the women of her halfway house.
But Des's downwardly-mobile skid through the gentrifying city is more dangerous than she realizes. Behind a high fence in wealthy Upper Northwest, a cult is preying on vulnerable women. And when Des discovers their secret, she'll have to find out whether she's willing to risk her own freedom for somebody else's.
Set in the shadow of the 2016 election, Punishment is a story about all the ways we surrender: the ridiculous ways and the sublime ways and the sad sordid ways; the ways which damage us and the ways which may, if we're lucky, heal us.
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About the author
Eve Tushnet is a writer in Washington, DC. She has written for publications including the Atlantic, Commonweal, The American Conservative, the New York Post, and the online editions of the New York Times and Washington Post. She mostly covers the arts, from forgotten punk films to the US National Figure Skating Championships. She edited the anthology "Christ's Body, Christ's Wounds: Staying Catholic When You've Been Hurt in the Church." She is the author of "Amends: A Novel" and "Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith" (Ave Maria Press 2014). Those are two very, very different books. Hobbies include sin, confession, and ecstasy.
