The Next Three Days

Lara Brennan is incarcerated in Allegheny County Prison in Pittsburgh, she convicted of murdering her boss. The basis of the conviction is a combination of physical evidence, she being in the vicinity of the crime at the time it occurred, and having some motive in they, known to others, not having gotten along. Her faithful, loyal and straight-laced junior college literature professor husband John Brennan, who has to take care of Luke Brennan, their toddler son, on his own, knows that Lara, solely in his certainty in who she is as a person, could not have committed the crime, that certainty without even needing to ask her or she explicitly stating as much. After three years, John and Lara have seemingly exhausted all their appeals to overturn the conviction, meaning a life for her behind bars. With Lara showing signs of extreme despondency about her new reality, John contemplates what he believes is their only option: to break her out of prison. His research begins with Damon Pennington, an ex-con who wrote about his numerous successful prison break outs. What John learns from Damon is that he needs to amass many things that John doesn't inherently have: nerves of steel including dealing with known criminals in needing certain illegal things only they would be able to provide and always looking over their backs if he is successful in them getting away, and a lot of money, not only in needing to live without traditional work for several years but to pay for those items to support both the break out and the escape. Except for those on a need to know basis, mostly those criminal elements from who he will need to purchase such items as new identification and firearms, John is all alone in he not telling anyone of his plans to shield them from any issues after the fact, including his generally supportive parents, Luke who would not understand regardless, Nicole the unknowing mother of one of Luke's classmates who he plans to use within the scope of the plan, and even Lara herself, she who he knows would tell him not to do it. John knows that there are potential known and unknown pitfalls at every step along the way, one that emerges in the latter category being that the authorities are planning on moving Lara meaning that he has to accelerate greatly the time-line of the break out to within three days. But one unknown that would devastate the plan the most is the remote possibility that Lara did actually commit the murder.