Romy Hall

Romy Leslie Hall is the main character of The Mars Room, and its primary narrator. Born in San Francisco in 1974, she was raised by a single mother, and never mentions her father’s name or history. At the novel’s outset, Romy is 29, and on her way to serve a double life sentence at Stanville prison, having killed a man named Kurt Kennedy, who had stalked her relentlessly. We learn through her recollections that she grew up in poverty in San Francisco, that she had been a regular user of illicit drugs, and had worked as stripper at a nightclub called the Mars Room. We learn that she was driven from San Francisco by Kurt Kennedy, a man who shadowed and harassed her. She fled to Los Angeles, where she killed Kennedy, after he caught up with her.

Romy also has a young son, Jackson, and she...