Winner of the 2013 Engine Books Novel Prize.

Moses and Jorge will never leave the maximum security prison. Outside its walls, Gina, Shell, and Ellen will never escape its influence, or the way it tethers them to one another. When Jorge dies in his cell, lives within and beyond the prison walls are upended, testing the boundaries we all draw to keep the good in, the hurtful out.

“A trio of faltering young women, each still tethered to the local prison, an inmate rapidly approaching his end—all live inside these pages with haunting, visceral persuasiveness. Dreamlike and startling, You Are Free to Go is poised between the imagined ether and bloody reality, but Sarah Yaw never flinches.”
—Michelle Wildgen, author of Bread and Butter and You're Not You

“Sarah Yaw's You Are Free to Go presents a large-scale tragedy of the highest order. Its brutal, authentic account of despairing men in prison is haunting on every page. It is terrifying and heartbreaking in its multiple portrayals of the hungering for freedom experienced by family members on the outside. As you read this remarkable novel you will feel you have actually touched the characters' most unrelenting, life-stealing fears—and you will understand the survival of hope occurring when their love endures despite their fears.”
—Kevin McIlvoy, author of Hyssop