The Lines of Connection
Updated at 8:07 p.m. ET on July 29, 2021
In the opening pages of her new memoir, Somebody’s Daughter, the writer Ashley C. Ford describes growing up with an incarcerated father, who was sentenced when she was just 10 months old. He would spend the next 30 years in prison; he was released in 2019. In the book, part of what Ford writes about is how so much of her life—and the lives of those around her—was shaped by his absence.
To the extent that they were able to maintain a relationship, Ford and her father did so largely through letters they exchanged over the course of those three decades. When things were going well, Ford, a friend of mine, would share what she was learning in school and the small but notable things happening in her life. Her father, in turn,
