Fiction is at its most powerful when it lets us walk in someone else’s shoes, teaching us to empathize with the kind of people who might otherwise never cross our paths. In An American Marriage, Tayari Jones does this while exploring one of the most disturbing and seemingly intractable issues in America: the incFiction is at its most powerful when it lets us walk in someone else’s shoes, teaching us to empathize arceration of innocent people, especially people of color, by a justice system with inherent biases.