In Fields of Grace, Hannah Luce shares her extraordinary story both before and after her ordeal as the only survivor of a plane crash that killed her friends and changed her life.
Hannah spent her childhood travelling the globe, evangelizing alongside her parents yet still endured a time of questioning her faith. In Fields of Grace she shares all of this and the agonies arising from being the only survivor of a crash which killed her dearest friends and left her with severe burns, and how she has since found resolution.
Hannah Luce, the daughter of pastor and Teen Mania Ministries co-founder, Ron Luce, describes the horrifying experience of being the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed four of her friends and left her with a grueling recovery after sustaining burns to 30 percent of her body. On board the twin-engine Cessna 401 from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Hannah was on her way to attend a Teen Mania "Acquire the Fire" youth rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
One hour into the flight smoke and what Luce describes as "hot air" and soot filled the cabin. The pilot, Luke Sheets, 24, radioed in for permission to descend as the plane plummeted to the ground and crashed near a corn field in rural Altoona, Kansas.
Despite the severe burns, covered only by what little remained of her clothes that had melted into her skin, Luce struggled to free herself from the burning plane. As she fell from the wreckage she remembered the childhood lesson to stop, drop and roll, as she extinguished the flames from her body.
Exhausted, weak and struggling to breathe, she dragged herself to safety and believed that all four of her friends had died in the crash until she saw Austin Anderson, 27, a US Marine who sustained burns to 90 percent of his body but survived long enough to guide Luce through a corn field to reach a gravel road where they were eventually met by two women who called 911 for help.
Anderson was later airlifted to a trauma center in Wichita where he died hours later. Luce was transported to the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, where her parents, Ron and Katie, helped her through the daily physical, mental and emotional trauma as she battled excruciating pain to survive.
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