A Forever Day (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | Allan D. Lund | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

This is a historical fiction in that two of the main characters, Bonnie and Clyde, were indeed historical figures. Their physical description and murderous ways are from FBI records and some newspaper articles. All the other characters are fictional. The village of Bienville and Gibsland, Louisiana, are reasonably accurate for the time period. Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910-May 23, 1934). Bonnie's father died when she was four years old. Her mother moved with her three children to Cement City, Texas, now known as West Dallas, to live with her parents. At sixteen, Bonnie, who was a very good student with a penchant for writing poetry, dropped out of high school and married a fellow student. It was never a good marriage, with her husband in and out of prison. And after three years, though not divorcing, they separated and never saw each other again. Clyde Chestnut Barrow aka Clyde Champion Barrow (March 24, 1909-May 23, 1934). He was the fifth of seven children, born into a poor farming family. The family moved piecemeal to Dallas in the early 1920s, living under the wagon until his father made enough money to buy a tent. Clyde's first arrest came at the age of seventeen for failing to return a rented car. That was just the beginning. He had legitimate jobs during the period of 1927 through 1929 but, during that time, was still involved in cracking safes, robbing stores, and stealing cars. He was captured and sent to a prison farm in 1930, where he killed a fellow inmate, got a lifer to take the blame, had a fellow inmate chop two of his toes off so that he could avoid hard labor. By the time he was paroled in February 1932, he had become a hardened criminal. The most credible account of their first meeting is January 1930, West Dallas. Bonnie, being out of work, was staying with a friend who was nursing a broken arm. Clyde stopped by to visit his friend and when he and Bonnie met, both were immediately smitten. They soon were traveling the central United States with their gang during the Great Depression, stealing cars for transportation, robbing and killing when cornered or confronted. At times, the gang included Clyde's older brother Buck Barrow and his wife Blanche, Raymond Hamilton, W. D. Jones, Joe Palmer, Ralph Fults, and Henry Methvin. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the Public Enemy Era between 1931 and 1935. Though known today for their dozen-or-so bank robberies, Bonnie and Clyde preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. The gang is implicated in the death of at least nine police officers and several civilians. Bonnie and Clyde were eventually ambushed and killed by law officers near the town of Sailes, in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. Their reputation was revived and cemented in American pop folklore by Arthur Penn's 1967 film, Bonnie and Clyde. Even during their lifetime, the depiction of them in the press was at considerable odds with the hardscrabble reality of their life on the road, especially for Bonnie Parker. She was present at a hundred or more felonies during the two years she was Barrow's companion, but she was not a machine gun-wielding killer as depicted in the newspapers, newsreels, and pulp detective magazines of that time. Gang member W. D. Jones later testified he could not recall ever having seen her shoot at a law officer. Bonnie's reputation as a cigar-smoking gun moll grew out of a playful snapshot police found at an abandoned hideout. It was released to the press and published nationwide. While Parker did chain smoke Camel cigarettes, she never smoked cigars. Bonnie's glamorization came from those photos, published after she and Clyde had been killed in the arrest as it was called. The scope of their popularity were both those who admired them and those who hated them. Though the incident to end their criminal activities took place near Bienville Parish, they were pretty much unknown to the citizenry of the area except for the few who read detective magazines or a large city newspaper.