The Garden of Second Chances by Mona Alvarado Frazier

She didn’t run because she killed him, she ran because she didn’t. But no one believes Juana, an undocumented seventeen-year-old incarcerated for her husband’s death. Amid the chaos of prison and her grief, she creates a garden in the yard. A safe space. A place where she gains strength to take on the system before she loses her child.

Juana, a seventeen-year-old mother, is sentenced to prison for murdering her husband. She claims she’s innocent—but no one believes her, including the prison staff and a gang leader in her block who torments her.

Juana’s troubles aren’t confined to prison, however—she’s undocumented, and her husband’s bereaved family is now threatening to take her baby from her forever. Feeling hemmed in on all sides and desperate to stay out of trouble, Juana creates her own refuge in the prison yard: a garden she created. As she digs in the soil, nurturing the plants, she remembers her courageous, long-deceased mother, who she knows would never give in or give up. Juana’s only hope for saving herself and her baby is to prove her innocence—but how?