Cargo of Orchids

June M. Blurton is a retired speech/language pathologist.

An evil old woman (who grows orchids) rules an island off the coast of
Colombia, where the narrator and her baby are held hostage and the
narrator is encouraged to become a cocaine addict. She is forced to
abandon the infant when she leaves, and her plane is forced down in
Panama. She is tried for murder and sentenced to die in the United
States. During her ten years on death row, she makes friends with two
other prisoners, Rainy and Frenchy, and writes their stories as well as
her own. At the end of the book, she is the only one left alive,
awaiting the outcome of her appeals.

There is nothing halfhearted about this novel. There are graphic
descriptions of murders, torture, Frenchy’s death in the electric
chair, childbirth in a seedy prison, and cocaine addiction. The
humor—and there is plenty of it—is black. The three friends try to
fit the personality and crime of each inmate to her chosen method of
execution. Prefacing each section is an excerpt from the prison’s
Inmate Information Handbook (e.g., “You are not allowed to talk in a
place where conversation is forbidden”). Cargo of Orchids fails to
draw the reader into the plight of the characters, but it is an
engrossing read nevertheless.