In & Out of Folsom

A botched heist got him in and a brilliant escape got him out. But it was what he learned along the way that got him home.Excerpt from chapter 22 (Downriver):...Now I get it. We've got a head start, and for the first time, I allow myself to consider the possibility that we just might actually get away with it. I lean my head out the window and watch the corn fields fly by in an ecstatic blur, the hot wind in my face blasting into me a reminder that I'm now on the outside. It's then that it hits me: freedom is not a definition. Freedom is a feeling. It's not some minimum set of allowed choices or some defined area within which you're permitted to operate. It's a feeling. Freedom is a feeling. It's the exhilaration that rushes into the wake of an unburdening. It's not experienced by those who know they're free because they live in a free country. It's not experienced by those who depend upon others to remove their chains, at a time and place of the other's choosing and under other-dictated circumstances and rules. Now I realize why I couldn't accept their offer of release. I would have missed out on my real freedom, the kind that's known only to those who have freed themselves...