David Kruh's Blog - Posts Tagged "inseparable"

Like millions of people I’ve seen the terrific Clint Eastwood movie about the 1962 escape from Alcatraz by Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers. Like millions more I have been to Alcatraz - as a tourist of course. (quick aside here - kudos to the National Park Service for creating a truly immersive experience. It's a great half day trip if you're in the San Francisco area.) Part of the tour takes you into the same exercise yard where they actually filmed some of the scenes from the Clint Eastwood movie. It was there one of the guides told us how, on certain nights, the sounds of music and laughter - and women - could be heard by frustrated inmates in their cells. And as I stood in that exercise yard looking at the Golden Gate bridge off in the distance and San Francisco just a mile south the idea popped into my head. What if the men had survived?

Then... another thought popped into my mind as my wife and daughter (who had recently become a teenager) joined me on those steps. Now, anyone who has a teen knows how they strain at their leash and will take almost any opportunity to assert their independence (as I did and my daughter certainly was doing.) The two experiences... Alcatraz and raising a teenager... came together in my mind to create this idea of having a teenager (straining at his leash) help the Anglin brothers to freedom.

I'm excited for the book's release this June, almost exactly 60 years since the audacious escape of Morris, Anglin and Anglin...