Bleak. Dark. Dystopian. Since age seventeen, Paul has been serving a life sentence in Permanent Detention, a special prison for enemies of the state. His crime? Possessing a banned book—one he inherited from his long-dead rebel father. Now approaching thirty, Paul's life has devolved to an empty, meaningless and very lonely routine. But one evening, his life takes a sudden and unexpected turn. For the first time in twelve years, he meets a woman—a fellow inmate named Pam. And though their encounter is brief, Paul falls deeply, profoundly in love. Flushed with emotions he never knew existed, Paul dreams of Pam at every waking turn, envisioning the life they could share if only their lives were their own—if only they were free and far away. Only Paul must cope with the fact that his life, like Pam's, belongs to the state ... and that no amount of dreaming can penetrate the prison's thick walls. And when he's told he can never see Pam again, Paul is forced to grapple with the emotions surging inside him ... and to find meaning in a life over which he has no control. Set in a dystopian future in which liberty and privacy have become relics of the past, Permanent Detention depicts a young man's resolve to find beauty amid bleakness, and to dream of love in life's darkest hours.