Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde
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Bestselling author Jeff Guinn combines exhaustive research with surprising, newly discovered material to tell the real tale of two kids from a filthy Dallas slum who fell in love and then willingly traded their lives for a brief interlude of excitement and, more important, fame. Go Down Together has it all-true romance, rebellion against authority, bullets flying, cars crashing, and, in the end, a dramatic death at the hands of a celebrity lawman.This is the real story of Bonnie and Clyde and their troubled times, delivered with cinematic sweep by a masterful storyteller. The Barnes & Noble Review Mention "Bonnie and Clyde," and the first image that springs to mind for most people is the "bullet-ballet" death climax of Arthur Penn s 1967 film. Fair or not, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway have been burned into our cultural consciousness when discussing the infamous bank-robbing duo who met their demise in an ambush near Gibsland, Louisiana, in 1934. The real story of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, however, bears little resemblance to the Hollywood fabrication, argues Jeff Guinn in Go Down Together, his riveting dissection of the life and times of the romantic robbers. Though Bonnie and Clyde were never criminal masterminds on the order of John Dillinger or Pretty Boy Floyd -- Guinn writes that "their two-year crime spree was as much a reign of error as terror" -- to the law-abiding public downtrodden by the Depression, they were "the epitome of scandalous glamour." The short, scrawny Clyde loved fast cars and was devoted to his family; Bonnie, "a borderline alcoholic," wrote poetry and yearned for an exciting catalyst to pull her out of the slums of West Dallas, Texas. Guinn s inside look at their "brief era of roaming banditry" is at times sympathetic to the doomed pair -- neither of whom would live to see their 25 birthday. "Their fatalism was tempered by their youth," he writes. Subtitled The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, the book relies heavily on a pair of unpublished memoirs from Clyde s mother and sister. Impeccably researched and drawing on interviews with surviving family members and those who came in contact with Bonnie and Clyde, Go Down Together chips through the layers of legend and outright fabrications (both from the prevaricating Clyde and self-aggrandizing lawmen) to get as close to the truth as anyone can. The result is a book pulsing with a narrative rhythm that has all the shock and excitement of a tommy gun s rat-a-tat-tat. --David Abrams
Prologue 1Before1 Henry and Cumie 92 The Devil's Back Porch 213 Clyde 294 Bonnie 445 Dumbbells 556 The Bloody 'Ham 687 Decision 82The Barrow Gang8 A Stumbling Start 939 Bonnie in Jail 10510 Murder in Stringtown 11411 Clyde and Bonnie on the Run 12412 The Price of Fame 13513 Raymond and W.D. 14414 "It Gets Mixed Up" 15515 The Shootout in Joplin 16216 Shooting Stars 17717 Disaster in Wellington, Murder in Arkansas 19118 The Last Interlude 20519 The Platte City Shootout 21120 The Battle of Dexfield Park 22021 Buck and Blanche 22822 Struggling to Survive 23423 The Eastham Breakout 24524 Hamer 251The Hunt25 The New Barrow Gang 25926 Hamer on the Trail 26727 The Methvins Make a Deal 27228 Bloody Easter 27829 Hamer Forms a Posse 28730 Another Murder 29131 The Letters of April 29632 The Noose Tightens 30333 Final Meetings 30934 A New Line of Work 31535 Haven 32036 The Beginning of the End 32537 "Do You Know Any Bank Robbers?" 32938 The Setup 33439 The Ambush 33840 "Well, We Got Them" 342Afterward41 Consequences 35142 The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde 361Note on Sources 367Notes 371Bibliography 430Acknowledgments 447Index 449
