LOVE GIVE US ONE DEATH
Bonnie and Clyde in the Last Days
by
Jeff P. Jones
**WINNER: 2016 Idaho Author Award**
**WINNER: 2015 George Garrett Fiction Prize**
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Texas Review Press
Date of Publication: October 25, 2016
Number of Pages: 232
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Bonnie and Clyde are the most famous outlaw pair in American history. Frank Hamer, the legendary Texas Ranger, was hired to stop them. Part prose, part verse, with historical artifacts interwoven, the well-researched novel tells the story of their deaths on a lonely Louisiana back road, as well as their bloody and short lives together. Its many voices invite the reader to become a ghost rider along with Bonnie and Clyde, while it also exposes the forces of injustice and greed that created them.
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PRAISE FOR LOVE GIVE US ONE DEATH:
“If you are a fan of historical fiction, you must secure a copy of his debut novel in which Jones ‘added, subtracted and distorted facts’ adroitly and creatively in his re-telling of Bonnie and Clyde’s last days. There are very few writers who can write like Jones — in many voices and in various forms — but he choreographs his work like an award-winning producer, designating him as unique as the members of the Clyde Barrow Gang.” -Idaho Statesman
“Love Give Us One Death delivers not only a knock-out story of brutal adventure, and love, across the heartland of the Great Depression, but a story about the very character of the republic itself.” -Robert Wrigley, Poet
“This is the history of love and destruction you didn’t know you needed. In a time of Public Enemies, we see the last legs of a journey between the violent and manic Romeo and Juliet-like pair. The last public outlaws are riding away into their last sunrise, and this book serves as its journal.” -Atticus Books
“The language is absolutely stunning. Characterization, historical setting, ambience are all accurate and depicted with great clarity. A terrific achievement.” -Mary Clearman Blew, Author of All But the Waltz
“This is historical fiction raised boldly to the level of myth.” -Tracy Daugherty, Author of The Last Love Song
It’s no use second guessing fate.
We’ll just be together until the end finds us.
It’s not hard to see why Love Give Us One Death by Jeff P. Jones is award winning. This historical fiction about the infamous Bonnie and Clyde is an eye opener for anyone who has seen the 1967 glamorized Hollywood account starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. The story of the real-life Bonnie and Clyde isn’t all about fast getaways in fancy cars, witty one liners, and dapper clothes. Jones creatively presents this outlaw couple through a distinctly clear and unforgiving lens.
While Love Give Us One Death is fiction, Jones expertly blurs the line between fact and fabrication. With a mix of intriguing prose, testimonials, depositions, speculation, poetry, and a 1930s comic strip, Love Give Us One Death captures the imagination and shows the reader who the real Bonnie and Clyde really are: two people flaunting their freedom and living precariously and recklessly. Jones doesn’t hold back in showing us exactly how unglamorous their life on the lam really was. Bonnie and Clyde and the occasional sidekick hardly bathed, ate like feral vagabonds, and often holed up to patch their wounds so they could rob and kill another day.
The book’s structure is choppy and fitfully paints a gruesome picture of a fearless couple barreling toward disaster. This structure perfectly mimics the haphazard and violent last few years of Bonnie and Clyde. I’ve always been fascinated by this gangster duo ever since I watched the 1967 movie years and years ago (and having nightmares of that terrifying shoot-‘em-up scene at the end that seemed to last forever) and seeing their bullet-ridden car in a museum when I was a kid. I know the car toured the states back in the day, but I recently found out there are many fakes out there as well, so I will never know if the one I saw was real or not (still gives me chills though).
I have to say the cover art is bold, mesmerizing, and completely grotesque. I can’t look away!
Side Note: About the part in chapter 6 where Bonnie has the conversation with Charles Floyd (Pretty Boy Floyd), and he tells the story about switching babies around at a revival, and parents taking them home like that without knowing until later – there’s a similar scene in The Virginian (1902) by Owen Wister. I wonder if there’s any kind of connection?
Enter the Giveaway below for a chance to win a poster and a signed copy of Love Give Us One Death: Bonnie and Clyde in the Last Days by Jeff P. Jones.
JEFF P. JONES’s ancestors were sharecroppers in east Texas. He was born in Denver, and was educated at the University of Colorado at Denver, the University of Washington, and the University of Idaho. He’s a MacDowell Fellow, and his writing has won a Pushcart Prize, as well as the Hackney, Meridian Editors’, A. David Schwartz, Wabash, and Lamar York prizes. He lives on the Palouse in northern Idaho. This is his first book.
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