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he first crack at The Bone Tree starts rough. Half the club members are missing due to delayed escorts from their cells, which leads to lots of interruptions and scraping chairs as the guys finally settle in.

The book itself is no light read: 900 pages smack in the middle of Greg Iles’ trilogy, thick with KKK vigilantes, mob ties, JFK conspiracy threads, and the haunting “bone tree,” a secret spot where victims’ bones were hung like trophies, rooted in slavery and secrets. There’s a lot going on in this novel, but it pulls in the club members fast.

The settings feel real to the men: nearby Natchez, Angola prison down the road, even the prison near Woodville where the club members are incarcerated makes an appearance.. “Man, we’re sitting right where this could’ve gone down,” one member observes.

Due to logistical issues and the fact that this is the club’s first foray into the book, the discussion is at times meandering. Some members haven’t started the book, others are tearing through, but a conversational theme eventually develops, about the risks of secrets, how they rot families from the inside, shatter trust and echo through the generations. X-Man lays it out straight: “Everybody’s hiding something… and you see what it does to everybody around them.”

Dollar, who says he coached football with Iles in Natchez 15-20 years back, calls it a barely veiled truth, “like he lived this instead of just made it up.” Battle is already deep into chapter 41, dropping conspiracy teases. Chris2 lists characters like they’re people he knows. Holloway lands a solid hit, tying the bone trophies to twisted Army war stories.

Iles’ death still haunts — he passed away on Aug. 15, 2025, at age 65 after battling multiple myeloma since ’96. The club grabbed this book as a way of paying tribute. His Natchez roots make the loss hit closer.

The meeting is loud and at times borders on chaotic, but the men are clearly animated by this book, and by the proximity of the Wilkinson prison. Justin, stuck in solitary, sends his notes by hand: Truth surfaces eventually. Keep digging.

This episode catches the raw spark when a heavy crime thriller crashes into prison reality — secrets, race, loyalty, and the thin line between the page and the life they’ve lived.

Books mentioned in this episode:

• The Bone Tree by Greg Iles (part two of a trilogy that includes Natchez Burning and Mississippi Blood)
• Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel

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en new members join the book club at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, and their arrival reshapes the room. As host Alan Huffman goes around the circle asking what each man likes to read — biographies, westerns, mysteries, Christian books, true crime — a portrait emerges of readers searching for something real, something that moves, something that might explain the choices that led them here.
The selection process is rarely simple. In a club of 25, tastes range from vampire novels to Malcolm X, from Harry Potter to Lonesome Dove. But this session takes an unexpected turn when a new member named Dollar quietly shares that Natchez author Greg Iles — whose sprawling, history-soaked Mississippi thrillers the club has long admired — just died. The news lands hard. Dollar knew him personally, had coached football with him, had ridden in the ambulance after his accident years ago.

From that moment of grief comes a rare convergence: another new member, who goes by 69, nominates Iles’ The Bone Tree — a 900-page mystery novel woven through with KKK ties, organized crime, and threads that reach all the way to the Kennedy assassination. It’s the second book in a trilogy they haven’t started. None of that matters. The vote is nearly unanimous.

This episode is about how a book gets chosen, and what that process reveals: about appetite, attention, and what these men are really looking for between the lines.

Books mentioned in this episode:

• The Bone Tree by Greg Iles
• Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel
• Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward
• A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
• The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas
• War by Sebastian Junger
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
• James by Percival Everett
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X

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he book club gathers to watch Restrepo—and the room fills with the sound of sustained gunfire echoing through a maximum-security prison.
In this episode, the men discuss the documentary Restrepo, co-directed by Sebastian Junger and the late Tim Hetherington, a visceral companion to Junger’s nonfiction book War, which the club read earlier. Filmed during a year embedded with a U.S. Army platoon at a remote Afghan outpost, Restrepo won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and was later nominated for an Academy Award.

But A Rare Record is about more than war on screen. As the club looks ahead to a second season of the podcast, the men talk excitedly about sound design, T-shirts, and how Hidden Mirrors might give incarcerated people a public voice—only for that optimism to collide with a sudden and unexplained ban on further recording by prison officials.

What follows is an account of how a fully approved podcast—endorsed by prison leadership, recorded with official permission, and even cleared for a planned CBS Sunday Morning segment—became a story the Mississippi Department of Corrections no longer wanted told. As prison administrators retreat, the podcast presses on using previously recorded sessions, transforming Hidden Mirrors into something unexpected: a rare, preserved record of voices that were meant to be heard, and then silenced.

Inside the cinderblock room, the conversations continue—about books, rehabilitation, public perception, and the power of being listened to. Outside it, the ground is already shifting beneath the project.

This is the beginning of Season Two—and the last season recorded inside the Wilkinson County prison.

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n this epilogue to Hidden Mirrors pilot season, we hear from listeners about why these conversations matter — from bestselling author Sebastian Junger to combat veterans, readers across the country (and one from overseas), and people who never imagined they’d have anything in common with men serving long prison sentences. Their reflections reveal the power of literature to bridge seemingly impossible divides and show what rehabilitation actually looks like.

But there’s a complication: the Wilkinson prison warden recently halted our recording, raising questions about who gets to tell these stories and why. We discuss what happened and what comes next.

This episode features reflections from:

Sebastian Junger — Author of The Perfect Storm and War, co-director of the documentary Restrepo. Sebastian participated in two Zoom calls with the book club in Episode 3 and explains why giving voice to incarcerated people matters for all of us.

Keith Dow — Member of PB Abbate veterans book club, co-founder of Dead Reckoning Collective. Keith discusses the unexpected power of book discussions between combat veterans and incarcerated readers.

Michael Jerome Plunkett — Leader of PB Abbate, author of the novel Zone Rouge. Michael describes how the Zoom conversations challenged his assumptions about prison and rehabilitation.

Brendan O’Byrne — Combat veteran featured in War and Restrepo. Brendan draws parallels between his own recovery from combat trauma through a New Hampshire Humanities book group and the healing potential of the prison book club.

Owen Phillips — Reader in Oxford, Mississippi, who recognizes in the club’s discussions what she calls “humanity’s Common Core.”

Ryan Nave — Birmingham, Alabama journalist who appreciates the raw honesty and unique perspectives the inmates bring to familiar books.

Kerry Dicks — Natchez resident who confronted her own biases about incarcerated people through listening.

Pete Joyce — Washington, DC listener who describes how the same book becomes different depending on who’s reading it.

Chris Harris — Originally from Scotland, now in New Zealand, drawn to the intersection of literature and the hidden world of prisons.

John Sewell — Personal friend who discusses how books narrow the divide between the incarcerated and the outside world, and why the podcast’s unpolished approach matters.

What Happened:

In November, Warden Tim Delaney rescinded approval for recording after the Mississippi Department of Corrections flagged a positive newspaper article about the podcast. Despite having secured approval from two wardens and MTC (the private company operating the prison), and initially from Warden Delaney and Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain for both the podcast and a planned CBS Sunday Morning segment, we were told we could no longer record future sessions.

The irony: positive press about rehabilitation through literature was treated as a problem.

Season 2 launches in January, based on previously recorded sessions provided by the prison or done with official permission.

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or incarcerated men serving long sentences, the holidays bring a complicated mix of loss, memory, and unexpected moments of connection. In this final episode of Hidden Mirrors’ pilot season, members of the Wilkinson County prison book club reflect on how Christmas feels when you can’t be with family—and how they’ve learned to create meaning and community behind bars.

Drawing on Jesmyn Ward’s novel “Where the Line Bleeds,” the men discuss childhood holiday memories, the painful distance from loved ones, and the creative ways they bring Christmas spirit into their pods—from paper-mache nativity scenes to elaborate decorations contests. One member shares the story of his most memorable prison Christmas, when he became a “live baby Jesus” that moved wardens to tears.

The conversations reveal how incarceration reshapes the definition of family, how holiday meals become rituals of unity across divided groups, and why some men have learned to find joy even in the bleakest circumstances. It’s a meditation on resilience, community, and what the season of giving means when you have almost nothing material to give.

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he Wilkinson County book club takes up Jesmyn Ward’s Where the Line Bleeds and lands on something bigger than plot: how to listen. What starts as a debate about parenting, responsibility, and small-town pressures becomes a practice in hearing one another with patience and respect. The men weigh different views of Seeley’s choices, talk honestly about their own families, and keep circling back to a shared theme: choices shape us, and listening helps us make better ones.

Along the way, the group reflects on how reading together has changed their day-to-day communication. They describe catching themselves before reacting, asking for clarity, and trying to understand where someone is coming from. You’ll hear the familiar sounds of the facility in the background, but what stands out is the care the men bring to the room and to each other.

In our next episode, the club spends a holiday inside Where the Line Bleeds and inside the prison, sharing memories of Christmas, hope, and what it means to show up for family.

Hidden Mirrors is recorded with the support of Management Training Corporation, the facility operator, and produced in collaboration with the Mississippi Humanities Council’s statewide prison book clubs.

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n this episode, the book club at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility connects over Zoom with veterans from Patrol Base Abbate, led by author and veteran Michael Plunkett, to explore how stories can bridge different worlds. With help from the prison’s education department, the men gather in the visitation room to discuss War by Sebastian Junger, joined by the author himself for a rare and deeply engaging conversation.

What begins as a discussion about combat and survival expands into a dialogue about grief, vigilance, and healing — from the front lines to life inside prison walls. The men respond with openness and insight, finding unexpected parallels between their experiences and those of soldiers at war. While the recording carries the familiar hum of a prison Zoom call, the honesty and connection that emerge make this exchange something extraordinary.

In our next episode, the club turns to Jesmyn Ward’s Where the Line Bleeds, a story about how choices define the paths we take.

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n this episode, the men of the Wilkinson Book Club unpack A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah — a memoir often described as harrowing, though for them, it was about hope.

As they talk through Beah’s story of being forced into war as a child and finding his way back to peace, the group keeps returning to that one word: hope. They see not only violence and loss, but endurance, compassion, and the possibility of change.

For some, Beah’s survival feels like proof that people can rebuild after unthinkable experiences. For others, it’s a reminder that faith, love, and patience — especially from strangers — can help someone find their way home again.

What might seem like a story of despair becomes, in their hands, a lesson in resilience and the human will to heal. “This book,” one member says, “is about somebody who didn’t let his circumstances define who he was. It shows that no matter what, you can rise above it.”

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nside a classroom at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility in Mississippi, a book club meets every other Friday. Journalist Alan Huffman sits with the men and follows the conversation from the page to lived experience: isolation, imagination, brotherhood, survival, and hope.

In Episode 1, Members share why stories matter inside, how books become mirrors, and how reading in community builds the habit of truly hearing one another. Recent reads include “A Long Way Gone,” by Ishmael Beah, and “War” by Sebastian Junger, which spark questions about resilience and the choices that shape us.