We'll Fly Away

WE'LL FLY AWAY is the dream of high school seniors and best friends Luke and Toby. They've even tried (but failed) to restore an old plane in the hope of making a daring escape from their troubled lives in a North Carolina town. Luke's mother has little interest in providing even the most basic necessities for him and his 5-year-old twin brothers, and Toby's father is an alcoholic petty criminal who routinely beats him. Their new escape plan revolves around the wrestling scholarship Luke has received. Toby will follow Luke to Iowa, although he has no idea how he'll pay for his tuition or where he'll live. As the story unfolds, each begins a first love relationship --  Luke with Annie, who does everything she can to support him and help out with the twins; and Toby with Lily, a woman in her 20s that he meets in a bar. Lily sets in motion the events that will end with Luke committing murder. The letters Luke writes to Toby from prison give readers a heartbreaking look at his life on Death Row. He writes of his feelings of isolation and emotional desolation, a friend named Eddie, who's scheduled for execution, a nun who assures him that everyone is capable of a transformation, and a lawyer who believes his sentence was an injustice and tells him that people are working to get him a new sentencing hearing. Readers must wait until the very end of the novel to find out who Luke murders and why he did it.