Billy Hayes was a boy we all know - a pleasant, intelligent young man from a decent, middle-class family. He had never been in trouble. After college he had gone off to travel in Europe, and one day his parents received a letter: Mom and Dad: This will be hard for you to read. I'm aching inside because I know the pain it will cause you. I was arrested at Istanbul airport yesterday, attempting to board an airplane with a small amount of hashish... Billy Hayes had made the biggest mistake of his young life. And the penalty he would pay was enormous. He was sentenced to four years in the filthiest, most brutal of Turkish prisons. A slender blonde among swarthy criminals, he was beaten and degraded and witnessed appalling scenes. Yet in these nightmarish surroundings Billy found friends:Arne,
… read more...the gentle, Swede who taught him how to exist in prison; Harvey, who withstood torture rather than betray Billy; and Max, the prison junkie, who was too sick to flee but who told Billy to secret of escape. --- excerpt from book's dustjacketRead More read less...