Hard Twisted
A Novel
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
In May of 1934, outside of Hugo, Oklahoma, a homeless man and his thirteen-year-old daughter are befriended by a charismatic drifter, newly released from the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. The drifter, Clint Palmer, lures father and daughter to Texas, where the father, Dillard Garrett, mysteriously disappears, and where his daughter Lucile begins a one-year ordeal as Palmer's captive on a crime spree-culminating in the notorious Greenville, Texas "skeleton murder" trial of 1935.
C. Joseph Greaves weaves a chilling tale of survival and redemption, encompassing iconic landscapes, historic figures, America's last Indian uprising, and one of the most celebrated criminal trials of the Public Enemy era, all rooted in the intensely personal story of a young girl's coming of age in a world as cruel as it is beautiful.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greaves follows his debut, Hush Money (as Chuck Greaves), with this impressive fictional recounting of Depression-era drifter Clint Palmer's real-life killing spree, told largely from the limited perspective of his 13-year-old girlfriend, Lottie Lucile Garret. Soon after the homeless Lottie meets him on the road in Oklahoma, her father disappears, and Lottie finds herself traveling alone with Clint through the American Southwest, gradually realizing that the ex-con is not just a charismatic, amoral hustler but a murderous psychopath. Their aimless, often harrowing odyssey sketches out a picture of 1934 1935 America struggling to cling to bedrock Christian values in the face of a precarious daily existence. Named the Best Historical Novel of 2010 in the SouthWest Writers International Writing Contest, this crime tale at times too closely recalls antecedents, from Horace McCoy to Cormac McCarthy, but otherwise shows Greaves as a strong literary voice who can render period with authority and violence without sensationalism.
