Jason sought her out, rode the bus with her, and talked, really talked with her. He was a sophomore, a track star, and involved in various school activities. Marina thought he looked exactly like the man of her dreams, and most people in the community agreed he was an uncommonly good-looking youth who lacked any attitude problems. But despite the frenzied research of reporters later, there had been no authentic courtship between the two of them. Yet Marina had believed that this was only a matter of time. Her daydreaming while reading continued unabatedly, only now she had a real person for a prince.

Then, a year later, Juliet Hansen and her family moved to Socorro, buying the old Penasco ranch on the south side of town. The Hansens were first generation Swedish immigrants and their children inherited the fair skin, blonde hair, and fine cheekbones of their parents’ heritage. Juliet was an avowed beauty—no argument all around. She turned heads wherever she went, and one that turned the most was Jason. Within a month of her arrival at school they were a couple, and showed this in a very tangible way.

Devastation would be a weak word to describe what took hold of Marina’s heart. The Jason and Juliet duo firmly dislodged her from her former role of confidant. Jason was friendly but distant, Juliet always seemed to be slightly pitying in her encounters with Marina. And her school mates delighted in throwing this fact in Marina’s face; many of the kids had always thought Marina was a bit too stuck up for her own good, what with her constant book reading and good grades in English and History.

Then, one day, Jason and Marina were excused from classes unexpectedly early and found themselves waiting for the school bus. Marina managed to bring up a neutral topic that allowed the two of them to chat away. Until Juliet came running out of the building, grabbed Jason’s hand and removed him a distance away. Jason acted embarrassed but let her have her way.

If Marina had simply gone home, had a good cry, and carried on as she planned, her life would have taken a very different course. But she’d been caught up in a plot of one book where the heroine had a frank talk with the balky hero, one-upped the conniving beauty, and won the day. Marina knew that the duo would hang out at a barn on the edge of the Penasco property, and she became determined to go there, force a confrontation, and perhaps score her own victory.

Her arrival a half hour after the couple did not go well. Court testimony from the duo portrayed Marina as being “unhinged” and “loopy,” and both agreed that the Farm Girl uttered threats, although cross-examination yielded little substance. Marina had descended into bathos by the time their argument ended. At this point, the account of events got shadier. But the facts as announced by the police in the day that followed were as such: at some point, Marina returned to the barn and set it on fire, waiting until Jason had left and Juliet was still inside.

Marina did not help her case much. She claimed to be out of her mind with grief and chagrin, didn’t know where she was, or what she was doing. The Hansens pressed charges, and Socorro had itself a first-class attempted murder trial, which was subsequently moved up to Albuquerque. Matches were found in Marina’s purse and the verdict from the public was swift: crime of passion. Marina was convicted and the judge, incensed by her stupor and the case’s media attention, gave her a harsh sentence: ten to fifteen years in prison.

The New Mexico Women’s Correctional Facility in Grants was suitably arid. But it had a library and that was where Marina gravitated. She continued to exist in a fog, but her forcible interactions with fellow inmates oddly increased her interpersonal abilities. She received a wide variety of attention from the convicts—from scorn and slaps to suggestions that went over her unworldly head. Ultimately, Marina’s dreaminess awoke a grudging protectiveness. The older Latina inmates mothered her, and that affection fed something that lay very still and buried inside her.

For lack of any better environment, she proved a model prisoner. After two years, she was allowed to work in the library and push the metal cart daily through the wards delivering books and magazines. Because of her notoriety, the prison’s warden kept her in a single cell. Once a year, near the winter holidays, her aunt and uncle came for a visit. It was awkward and always shorter than the actual time permitted. The floods of media attention cooled off, and the facility’s administration turned down all requests for interviews.