The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose (2019) is a memoir by social entrepreneur Chris Wilson, who was convicted of murder as a teenager and sentenced to life in prison. Wilson describes his journey from prison to becoming an entrepreneur, artist, and social justice advocate. Wilson describes how he used a Master Plan to secure an unlikely reprieve from a life sentence, but he also explains how and why the criminal justice system works against people like him.

Content Warning: The Master Plan discusses structural violence, domestic abuse, substance addiction and abuse, racial discrimination, depression, and suicidal ideation. These topics are pervasive and are discussed in all summary and analysis portions of the guide.

Plot Summary

The Master Plan is divided into five parts, each of which corresponds to a chronological phase in Wilson’s life. During each phase, a particular feeling or condition predominates: trauma, depression, determination, frustration, and triumph. Each part features brief chapters averaging between five and six pages in length. Chapters have titles, but they are not numbered.

Wilson finds meaning in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In Plato’s story, a group of prisoners are chained together in a cave and see nothing but shadows on the torch-lit wall. They believe the shadows are reality until one of the prisoners escapes the cave and then returns to tell the others about the world outside. Part 1, “The Cave,” shows Wilson as an adolescent living in a metaphorical cave. Between his grandparents’ rough neighborhood in Washington, D.C., and his mother’s home in Temple Hills, Maryland, Wilson experiences gangs, guns, drugs, violence, and death. He comes to believe that these social conditions are due in part to misperceptions of reality. People living in the neighborhood to not have educational resources to better understand the sources and causes of the community’s troubles. Political leaders and the criminal justice system also live in a world of shadows. They do not understand these neighborhoods nor the experiences of the people who live there. Wilson sees himself as the person who leaves the Cave and then returns to help people understand reality beyond the shadows. The Cave is the central symbol of Wilson’s theme of Perception Versus Reality.

After years of trauma—a boyfriend’s physical abuse of his mother and her subsequent drug addiction; his father’s abandonment of him and his siblings; his older brother’s constant bullying; his cousin Eric’s murder; and his own suicidal thoughts—Wilson turns to crime. Many times, he finds himself in dangerous situations. One day, after being kidnapped at gunpoint by drug dealers who mistake his identity, Wilson returns home shaken. That night, stalked and threatened by two men on the street, Wilson pulls his gun, fires six shots, and kills one of the men. In Part 2, “The Middle Passage,” the shortest of the book’s five parts, Wilson describes his trial, conviction, solitary confinement, and transfer to Patuxent maximum-security prison, where he languishes in a state of fear, convinced that there is no point to existence. The term Middle Passage is often used for the sea voyage enslaved persons undertook from West Africa to the West Indies.

Part 3, “The Master Plan,” is the book’s lengthiest. Wilson meets Steve Edwards, a fellow inmate who insists on reading and trying to improve himself. Wilson determines that he wants his life to have a purpose, so he creates a Master Plan and follows it every day without exception. He works out and avoids junk food. He becomes a voracious reader and forms a book club. He earns his GED. Along the way, he builds a friendship with Steve, who tutors him through the GED program and becomes both his best friend and inspiration. Abandoned by his own family, Wilson experiences the kindness of Steve’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards.

Wilson enrolls in carpentry classes, where he benefits from the wisdom of older inmates like Tooky. With Steve, Wilson serves on the Inmate Advisory Council. Wilson starts a photo business. He mentors other inmates and helps them discover meaning. He learns to speak Spanish and Italian. He takes college courses in Ethics and Modern American History and earns an Associate’s degree. He transforms the prison’s career center into a Master Plan workshop. He avoids every form of temptation and dedicates himself to helping others. His work catches the attention of a young lawyer, Keith Showstack, who gets him a sentence reduction hearing. Judge Cathy Serrette, impressed by Wilson’s Master Plan, reduces his sentence to 24 years.

Wilson’s success turns to frustration in Part 4, “The Middle Passage, Part Two.” Prison administrators decide to keep Wilson incarcerated for as long as possible. When he is finally released into a halfway house, Wilson discovers that his caseworker is determined to see him fail. Wilson enrolls in classes at the University of Baltimore, but his mother’s death by suicide precipitates another period of depression, and the caseworker sends him back to Patuxent, this time to the mental-health ward. With Steve’s help, Wilson completes his college assignments. Wilson serves out his time and is released from prison on May 11, 2012, five and a half years after Judge Serrette reduced his sentence.

In Part 5, “From Plan to Action,” Wilson explains how he overcame the myriad obstacles confronting “returning citizens” (his phrase for former inmates that he believes are too often casually dismissed as “ex-convicts”). Erick Wright, his sister’s former boyfriend who unexpectedly visited and supported him in prison, gives Wilson a place to stay. Wilson finds a job with a nonprofit in Baltimore. He returns to the University of Baltimore, switches to the business school, and starts a business. He secures contracts for his business, hires returning citizens, and begins to make a profit. He tells his story to anyone who will listen, from NPR’s audience to grieving mothers in his old neighborhood who have lost children to drugs and violence. He also becomes an advocate for Black Baltimore, experiencing the combined weight of poverty and aggressive policing. Finally, he reconnects with his son Darico and resolves never to abandon his son.