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AUTHOR’S NOTE

The style, the voices that speak this book, are an attempt to capture a process that began in earnest about four years ago: my brother and I talking about our lives.

To learn my brother’s story I visited him in prison and listened to what he had to say. I’d take a few notes—names, dates, sequences of events—then, some time later, after I’d had an opportunity to absorb his words but while they were still fresh in my mind, I would reproduce on paper what I’d heard. Robby would read what I’d written and respond either when I visited him next or by letter. His suggestions and corrections usually concerned factual matters, although his sense of larger issues, of truth and correctness, his feelings for narrative tone and pace, as well as the invaluable quotes from his letters and poems, added immensely to the final result. As a novelist, I have had lots of practice creating written versions of speech, so I felt much more confident about borrowing narrative techniques learned from fiction than employing a tape recorder

I read many books about prison and prisoners, talked long hours to family members, especially my mother, reviewed court transcripts, newspaper files, and police reports in order to document events and educate myself. I gratefully acknowledge these sources, but also take full responsibility for the final mix of memory, imagination, feeling and fact. Reconstructing the tragic chain of circumstances that caused one young man to die and sent three others to prison for life has been a harrowing experience. In the hope that there is something to learn from this account, something to salvage from the grief and waste, I’ve striven for accuracy and honesty. Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of people mentioned in the text.