Paradise Lost & Found

Staying Sane  

        In 1983, I was convicted of bank fraud and sent to a chain gang high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Three years later, I escaped, stole an airplane, flew to Florida, and began robbing banks. Five years of high living and more than 100 banks later, I was arrested in Georgia and sent to the “Supermax” prison in Colorado—an Orwellian nightmare of razor wire and high-tech wizardry where the solitude and sensory deprivation were total, and where the connecting of words on paper was the only thing that kept me from connecting my neck to the ceiling by way of a knotted sheet. After 15 years there, I was at last transferred to Central Florida, where I am today.

Robert Hal Brame
Coleman, FL