Behind the headlines: Bonnie wanted to be a movie star

Bonnie Parker was born October 1 (that makes her a Libra) in 1910, in Rowena, Texas. She didn’t have an easy early life, but she had big dreams.

Her father died when she was four and her mother moved the family (she had an older brother and a younger sister) to an impoverished suburb of Dallas known as Cement City so they could all live with Bonnie’s grandparents.

Bonnie was a bright, precocious child who thrived on attention. She liked to sing and dance and perform on stage, and—because she was considered especially pretty—she dreamed of becoming a film actress.

When she was sixteen, she posed for some glamour shots she hoped would catch the eye of big-shot Hollywood producers. She and her mother excitedly mailed them off to Tinsel Town. Most of the star-making producers ignored the letters, although apparently one wrote back, declining her entreaties.

Bonnie was devastated. Below are a some of the actual glamour photos of Bonnie Parker from that era.

Soon after, seeking a different pathway out of poverty, she married her high school sweetheart Roy Thornton. It didn’t last long. Their relationship fell apart, and even though they never divorced, she never saw him again (and was buried with a tattoo of his initials on her leg).

Bonnie never got the fame from Hollywood films she craved, but she certainly achieved a different kind of fame: infamy. While waiting tables, she met Clyde Barrow in 1930.

In our book, Bonnie and Clyde: Resurrection Road, Bonnie doesn’t get the fame she wants, but she gets something better: a shot at redemption. The outlaw lovers are kidnapped just before the fatal ambush and forced to work for the government trying to save President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal policies. Their special skills—violence and cunning—make them necessary, and expendable assets in the fight for justice for the working man.

=================== ║=================== 

A native of Texas, Clark Hays spent his early childhood there and then moved for a decade with his family around the world following the job of his father, a legendary wildcat petroleum drilling engineer, before finally landing on a Montana ranch. Kathleen McFall was born and raised in Washington, D.C.

Between the two of them, the authors have worked in writing jobs ranging from cowboy-poet to energy journalist to restaurant reviewer to university press officer. After they met in the early 1990s, their writing career took center stage when they wrote the first book in The Cowboy and the Vampire Collection as a test for marriage. They passed. Their debut novel was picked up by Llewellyn (St. Paul, MN) with a first edition published in 1999, making it among the earliest stories in the resurgence and reimagining of the undead myth for modern audiences.

Since then, Clark and Kathleen have published five novels together—the latest reimagines the life of the legendary outlaws Bonnie and Clyde.

Clark and Kathleen have won several writing awards, including a Pushcart Prize nomination (Clark) and a fiction fellowship from Oregon Literary Arts (Kathleen). Their books have been honored with a Best Books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews, Best Books of 2016 by IndieReader, and a 2017 Silver IPPY Medalist.