HistoryUnited States: 1900 to 1945
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The flesh-and-blood story of the outlaw lovers who robbed banks and shot their way across Depression-era America, based on extensive archival research, declassified FBI documents, and interviews
The daring movie revolutionized Hollywood—now the true story of Bonnie and Clyde is told in the lovers’ own voices, with verisimilitude and drama to match Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.
Strictly nonfiction—no dialogue or other material has been made up—and set in the dirt-poor Texas landscape that spawned the star-crossed outlaws, Paul Schneider’s brilliantly researched and dramatically crafted tale begins with a daring jailbreak and ends with an ambush and shoot-out that consigns their bullet-riddled bodies to the crumpled front seat of a hopped-up getaway car.
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow’s relationship was, at the core, a toxic combination of infatuation blended with an instinct for going too far too fast. The poetry-writing petite Bonnie and her gun-crazy lover drove lawmen wild. Despite their best efforts the duo kept up their exploits, slipping the noose every single, damned time. That is until the weight of their infamy in four states caught up with them in the famous ambush that literally blasted away their years of live-action rampage in seconds. Without glamorizing the killers or vilifying the cops, the book, alive with action and high-level entertainment, provides a complete picture of America’s most famous outlaw couple and the culture that created them.
"When David Newman and I were writing the screen play for "Bonnie and Clyde" we did an enormous amount of research, but not nearly as much as Paul Schneider. And it has paid off handsomely; he has written a splendid biography of two iconic American gangsters who were 'not only outlaws, but outcasts.' From the first page, waiting for a prison break on a foggy morning in East Texas to the last, the book is riveting and unforgettable."—Robert Benton
Paul Schneider is the author of the critically acclaimed Brutal Journey, the highly praised The Enduring Shore, and The Adirondacks, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. He and his wife, the photographer Nina Bramhall, and their son, Nathaniel, divide their time between Bradenton, Florida, and West Tisbury, Massachusetts.
CHAPTER 1
EASTHAM
Fog rolls off the Trinity River in East Texas in the hours before dawn, especially in winter, and lies on the land like Vaseline. It’s thick and calm and quiet and peaceful in the fog, there where the piney woods that stretch on east into Louisiana give way somewhat abruptly to blackland prairies that spread west all the way to Dallas and beyond. She almost can’t see her hand held out of the open car door in front of her own face.
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