ROSS HEARD

Published by Vine Leaves Press – Coming October 2027

For fourteen years, Chester Kilner has awaited his execution on death row in Texas. He is soft-spoken, middle-aged, and has penchants for chess, fishing, and books. His crime? The brutal murders of his wife and her surreptitious lover. It’s 2018, and the day of his death is yet to be scheduled.

Strong-armed by the Suthers County sheriff, journalist and ne’er-do-well Jonny Wilde is coerced into penning Chester’s story. He visits the convict on death row, and what begins as Jonny’s out for bad behaviour becomes a source of mutual admiration—even friendship. In their interviews, he unravels the true story behind the double homicide that secured Chester’s death sentence, and the troubled life and lies that brought a man who once loved nothing more than to fish with his father to expect to greet death before his time.

Jonny, battling alcoholism and suicidal ideation, comes to see more of himself in the convict than he ever would have believed. With each passing day, however, Chester is another closer to an end brought about by the state. At the close, Jonny will have the story he set out to get—that of one guilty man’s strive for atonement—but he still has to tell it. If he fails, then the convict he befriended will never know redemption, however narrow that chance could ever truly be.