It has been an arduous, surreal journey for eight Hawaiian female prisoners sent to do their time on the mainland.

The plight of this group of women housed, most recently, in a prison in the small eastern Kentucky town of Wheelwright, would have escaped unnoticed, had it not been for the death of 43-year-old Sarah Ah Mau, on New Year’s Eve 2005. Mau, serving a life sentence for second-degree murder, had been incarcerated since 1993 and had a shot at parole eligibility in August 2008.

She never got that chance. Instead she died of as-yet-unexplained “natural causes” after two days in critical condition—and a month after first complaining of severe gastrointestinal distress. Family members and fellow prisoners say that Ah Mau’s pleas for medical care were ridiculed, downplayed or ignored by prison employees.