“Outlawry’s the only thing comes close to freedom in this country anymore.” — Clyde Barrow, “Love Give Us One Death”
“Them as has must lose ‘cause them as hasn’t can’t, but that aint democratic, so they took our hearts and fed them bit by delicious red bit to the public to prove the one thing they’ll never say, freedom don’t pay.” — Bonnie Parker, “Love Give Us One Death”
Bonnie and Clyde are perhaps the most famous outlaw couple in American history. In his debut experimental novel, “Love Give Us One Death,” Moscow author Jeff P. Jones recounts their bullet-riddled, blood-stained love affair.
Jones’ ancestors were sharecroppers in Texas, where the doomed couple met in 1930. Bonnie Parker was 19 and Clyde Champion Barrow was 21. Jones’ descriptions breath life into the sights, smells and sounds of rural life at the beginning of the Great Depression, from boiled greens to burning tires. He spent seven years researching and writing the book, which strings together storytelling, prose, poetry, dated entries, transcripts and colorful period dialogue. In the afterword Jones combs through the sources separating fact and fiction.
The book was one of the Top Five Fiction picks in the 2016 Idaho Authors Award.
Jones was raised in Denver and has lived in Moscow for 12 years. He taught creative writing as a lecturer at the University of Idaho before stepping away this year to focus on his writing. His stories and essays have won the Hackney, Meridian Editors’, Pushcart, Wabash and Lamar York prizes. The book is published by Texas Review Press and is available at Bookpeople of Moscow and online.
“Love Give Us One Death, Bonnie and Clyde in the Last Days,” by Jeff P. Jones, 238 pgs., Texas Review Press
