
The young man having the heated discussion? Jones says, "He looked fine, but she looked great. "The woman was beautifully dressed, cashmere coat, the whole nine." "I overheard a couple arguing," she remembers. Then, while she was in Atlanta visiting her mother, she found what she needed during a routine trip to the shopping mall. But she was still searching for the inspiration for a novel she'd hope to write: one that involved an individual's encounter with the system, and the subsequent ripples that touch that person's community.

She learned a lot about the American criminal justice system. During a fellowship to Harvard, writer Tayari Jones spent months and months studying the intersection of race and criminal justice.
