Fresh Air · 2026-07-20 · 51 min · 8,169 words

Harriet Clark spent 37 years visiting her mom in prison

Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Timestamps stay in sync with the live audio

This election season you can streamline your news intake with up first. Our team of reporters and editors works overnight so you can start every morning with three stories you need to know in short episodes, 12-14 minutes long, to save you time and your sanity. Follow up first on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.

One of the last actions of the extremist left wing groups with roots in the 1960s was the Brinks robbery of 1981. Two militant groups, one an offshoot of the Weather Underground, the other an offshoot of the Black Panthers, robbed a Brinks armored truck in the carrying over a million and a half dollars. It ended in a shootout in which one security guard and two police officers were killed. Judith Clark was a getaway driver who was sentenced to 75 years to life.

It meant leaving behind her eleven month old daughter. That daughter, Harriet Clark, is my guest. She's just published a novel that draws from her own experiences being raised by her grandparents and visiting her mother in prison every weekend for most of the thirty seven years her mother was incarcerated. It required traveling about an hour from New York City to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison for women.

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