Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend

Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend

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. Almost 75 years ago, the four-year murder and robbery spree of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow ended in a hail of bullets on a desolate Louisiana road. During those four years, the Barrow Gang held up a few banks, knocked over numerous grocery stores, killed several police officers, and successfully cast themselves as latter-day Robin Hoods struggling against an unjust social order. This work strives, successfully for the most part, to strip away the sensationalism and view the couple and their exploits accurately. More lyrical than Jeff Guinn in Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde (2009), Schneider uses the words and even thoughts of key players to tell their story. He eloquently describes the bleak, Depression-era environment that helped spawn Bonnie and Clyde and made the public willing to accept a pair of damaged souls as romantic figures. For both crime aficionados and general readers with an interest in the era, this book is of great value. --Jay Freeman "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. It’s that thick. And even better, surely no one can see her sitting here in this car on this dirt side road off another dirt side road, not far from the river bottoms. Sure, her leg that was burned badly a few months back still hurts and the other hip hurts even more from the rheumatism that flared up only recently. Rheumatism, at only twenty-three years old, no less. Too much sitting in cold cars. Too much sleeping in cold cars! But even with the pain, it’s a comfort to know she can’t be seen parked here in a cloud at daybreak, like a ghost in heaven. It’s chilly, this cloud on the ground, but it’s safe, and if death is like this fog it might not be so bad. Only it’s not worth thinking about death. That’s the rule. "Let’s don’t be sad," she said to her mother only a few months before when the subject came up. We’re here now. We’re alive. "Let’s don’t be sad" is what she said. It’s like thinking about air, for God’s sake. And why think about air? Death and air. Fog, though, is good. Thick and quiet, except for now and then an occasional tick ticka tick of the steel in the car that says the sun has risen, even if she can’t see it rising. When you’re standing in a cold ditch in fog so thick you can’t even see the car only a few yards away it’