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From the best-selling author of Billy the Kid and Route 66, a true-life story of a notorious outlaw that magnificently re-creates the vanished, impoverished world of Dust Bowl America. Michael Wallis evokes the hard times of the era as he follows the life of Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd from his coming of age, when there were no jobs and no food, to his descent into a life of petty crime, bootlegging, murder, and prison. Before long he was one of the FBI's original "public enemies." After a series of spectacular bank robberies he was slain in an Ohio field in 1934 at the age of thirty. Pretty Boy is social history at its best, portraying, with a sweeping style, the larger story of the hardscrabble farmers whose lives were so intolerably shattered by the Depression.… (more)
User reviews
First, the author has included a ridiculous amount of detail that has very little to do with Charles "Pretty Boy" (aka Choc) Floyd. Page upon page upon page about the Civil War, for
Second is the author's tendency to tell us what people were thinking and feeling - when how could he possibly know? ("There was a touch of delicious insanity in them [Charley and his girlfriend, Ruby] that only other lovers could recognize. Folks saw it in their eyes when Choc and Ruby, grassstained and flushed, walked down the paths that fed into the thickets and weeds out toward the cemetery. They saw it when Choc galloped on a horse down the road through Akins with Ruby perched behind him. They were oblivious to the graver concerns of the world." "Choc hardly blinked when he heard the judge say: 'I hereby sentence you to five years in the state penitentiary at Jefferson City, Missouri.' Afterward, though, when he was being shuffled back to his cell, the judge's words finally soaked in, and Choc got a lump in his throat the size of of one of Maggie Hardgrave's good biscuits." "Charley found that the penitentiary brought out the worst in men.")
Finally, I really tired of the similies and the down-home, aw-shucks kind of writing at times that was, I guess, supposed to help me feel like I was sitting there having a strong cup of coffee with the Floyd clan.
In the end, I was frustrated that I never felt I came to know what motivated Pretty Boy Floyd. He was poor and hated it - he was hardly alone in the Depression. He wanted nice stuff; so did many people, and they never became outlaws.
The third half of the book is by far the best, and for that reason I gave three stars to this review. But I have to believe a more insightful, compelling biography of Pretty Boy Floyd is needed.