Change of Heart

In the mid-1990s, June Nealon survives a car accident that kills her first husband, Jack, leaving her to raise their young daughter Elizabeth alone. A police officer named Kurt Nealon helps the family in the aftermath and eventually marries June. When she becomes pregnant, they hire a quiet, inarticulate young carpenter named Shay Bourne to finish a nursery addition. Elizabeth takes an immediate liking to Shay, but his time with the family ends in catastrophe: Kurt and Elizabeth are shot dead, and Shay is arrested.

Seven months later, a college student named Michael Wright serves on the jury for Shay's capital murder trial, the first death penalty case in New Hampshire in 58 years. The prosecution presents devastating evidence: Kurt was shot while attempting to arrest Shay after finding him with Elizabeth, whose underwear was in Shay's pocket. The defense argues the gun went off accidentally, but Shay never takes the stand. Michael is the last juror to vote for execution, yielding after hours of pressure. Meanwhile, June gives birth to Claire.

Eleven years pass. Shay is now on I-tier, a high-security cellblock at the state prison. He is placed next to Lucius DuFresne, a former artist dying of AIDS whose body is covered in Kaposi's sarcoma, a cancer caused by the disease. Strange events begin immediately. A news segment about Claire Nealon, a girl awaiting a heart transplant, appears on every channel on the tier. The tier's tap water turns into what smells and tastes like wine. A correctional officer's infant daughter is gravely ill; Shay's cryptic advice leads the officer to discover a treatable allergy. Fellow inmate Calloway Reece's pet robin dies during a cell search but revives after Shay takes it into his cell. Shay shares a single piece of gum with all seven inmates; each man takes some, yet the piece arrives at Lucius's cell intact. The next morning, Lucius's lesions have vanished, and his blood work shows a normal immune system despite months of secretly skipping his medications. Crowds gather outside the prison, calling Shay the "Death Row Messiah."

Shay's last appeal is denied, and his execution date is set. He has one request: to donate his heart to Claire as atonement for what he took from the Nealon family. Meanwhile, Michael, now Father Michael Wright, a priest at St. Catherine's in Concord, has entered the priesthood to atone for his role on the jury. When the prison requests a spiritual advisor for Shay, Michael volunteers, concealing his past. Shay does not recognize him. Michael learns that lethal injection would destroy the heart, making donation impossible.

Maggie Bloom, an ACLU attorney, takes Shay's case and discovers a loophole in New Hampshire's criminal code: If the commissioner of corrections finds lethal injection "impractical," the sentence may be carried out by hanging, a method that would preserve Shay's organs. Maggie builds her case under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), a federal law protecting inmates' religious freedoms, arguing that Shay's beliefs require organ donation for salvation and that lethal injection burdens that practice.

Crash Vitale, the tier's self-appointed leader, orders a hit on Shay through the Aryan Brotherhood, a white-supremacist prison gang. One attack leaves a correctional officer stabbed and pronounced dead, only to revive on a stretcher. A second attack hospitalizes Shay with a fractured skull. Meanwhile, Michael reads the Nag Hammadi texts, an ancient collection of early Christian writings, and discovers that Shay has been quoting the Gospel of Thomas verbatim, a non-canonical Christian text Shay has no education to know. When asked, Shay shows no recognition of the source.

Michael arranges a restorative justice meeting between Shay and June. June agrees not to forgive but to confront him. The meeting is disastrous: Shay manages only the words "She was better off dead," sending June fleeing. After breaking down in the parking lot, June reverses course. She will take the heart, not out of mercy but because she wants to watch Shay die. Dr. Wu, Claire's cardiologist, confirms Shay is a perfect match, with an inexplicably small heart the right size for a child.

At trial, Michael testifies as Shay's spiritual advisor, quoting Shay's words, which match passages from the Gospel of Thomas. Ian Fletcher, a former television atheist turned religious academic, testifies about the Gnostic Christians, early adherents who believed salvation required personal spiritual seeking rather than institutional worship. Shay takes the stand but veers between lucidity and chaos. During a recess, his restraints clatter to the floor, still fastened, as if his body passed through the metal.

Claire's health deteriorates sharply. Her internal defibrillator fires repeatedly, and she is hospitalized. When she discovers the donor is Shay Bourne, she refuses the heart. Claire flatlines and is resuscitated but writes on a whiteboard asking her mother to let her go. Judge Haig rules in Shay's favor, invoking the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, or world repair, and orders the state to allow hanging.

Michael confesses to Shay that he served on the jury. Shay is enraged but eventually reveals the truth: He returned to the house for his tools, walked in on Kurt sexually abusing Elizabeth, and grabbed her. Kurt confronted him with a gun, and in the struggle it discharged, killing both. Shay took the blame to protect June from the truth. Maggie urges him to fight for exoneration, but Shay refuses. Michael finds Shay's sister Grace in rural New Hampshire, her face scarred from a fire in their foster home. Grace reveals that she, not Shay, set the fire that killed their abusive foster father, and Shay took the blame for that, too.

Grace visits June at the hospital and shares her story. Suppressed memories surface for June: Elizabeth's underwear inside a couch cushion, Kurt's excuses to linger during Elizabeth's baths, Elizabeth's nightly pleas to leave the lights on. June accepts that Shay's heart is Claire's only chance and tells Claire she cannot watch another child die. Claire reluctantly agrees.

Lucius's remission ends, and he dies of AIDS-related pneumonia, leaving behind a painting of Shay rising in white robes. On execution morning, wildflowers have sprouted through the holding cell's cracked cement floor. Michael spends the final night beside Shay and administers last rites. At 10 a.m., Shay stands on the gallows inside a circus tent erected over the prison courtyard. Asked for final words, he finds June in the audience and says, "I forgive you." The trapdoor opens. Behind a curtain, a medical team confirms brain death and preserves Shay's organs. Claire undergoes the transplant, and the new heart begins to beat.

Three weeks later, Claire narrates her recovery. Michael visits Shay's grave and receives from Grace a shoe box containing Shay's belongings, including a photograph stolen from Michael's college dorm, a picture of Michael and his grandfather, suggesting Shay knew Michael's identity all along. The wrapping paper is a torn page from the Nag Hammadi collection containing the Gospel of Thomas, the source of all Shay's quotations. Furious, Michael tears it up, then gathers the fragments and buries them beneath the lilies on Shay's grave. At home, Claire finds her elderly dog Dudley lying cold and still. She holds him against her chest, and beneath her hands, the dog's heart begins to beat again.