DAM NATION
Bonnie and Clyde #2
by
CLARK HAYS AND KATHLEEN McFALL
Date of Publication: March 24, 2018
Number of Pages: 266
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Bonnie and Clyde: Defending the working class from a river of greed.The year is 1935 and the Great Depression has America in a death grip of poverty, unemployment and starvation. But the New Deal is rekindling hope, with federally funded infrastructure projects, like Hoover Dam, putting people back to work. Set to harness the mighty Colorado River for electricity and irrigation, the dam is an engineering marvel and symbol of American can-do spirit.
So, why is someone trying to blow it up?
When an informant on the construction site is murdered, Bonnie and Clyde—spared from their gruesome deaths and forced into a covert life working for the government—are given their second assignment: stop the bomb and protect the thousands of laborers and families in the company town. It's their most dangerous mission yet: working for a living.
Can the notorious lovers put aside their criminal ways long enough to find out who wants to extinguish the American dream, and hopefully reclaim a shred of redemption along the way?
The thrilling story cuts back and forth between the modern era where a reporter interviews the now-elderly Bonnie Parker, and the dangerous 1930s undercover exploits of Bonnie and Clyde, as they are thrust into a fight to defend the working class against corporate greed.
Dam Nation, a historical thriller with unsettling contemporary parallels, continues the explosive "what-if" series, started in Resurrection Road, about two unlikely heroes fighting to defend the working class during America's Great Depression.
PRAISE FOR BONNIE AND CLYDE: DAM NATION:
Crisply written, well-researched, thoroughly entertaining. As in Resurrection Road, Hays and McFall evoke time and place well in this sequel. The story’s politics are fresh and timely. Readers will find Bonnie and Clyde to be great company, and the novel’s framing story (the widowed Bonnie’s 1984 recollections) gives their relationship an extra layer of poignancy.
-- Kirkus Reviews
“Dam Nation” highlights the real-life turmoil of the 1930s as only Hays and McFall can — shadowy intrigue, plenty of suspects and enough behind-the-scenes and under-the-covers action to keep the narrative sizzling along to the final page.
-- East Oregonian
A rollicking good read. The real history of the rise of unions and worker rights against the backdrop of a nation recovering from the Great Depression contributes an engrossing, realistic scenario; a vivid read that blends fiction with nonfiction elements in a way that makes the book hard to put down.
-- Midwest Book Review
A jailhouse interview with Clyde Barrow
Interview recorded by Royce Jenkins,
a reporter for the Texas Lubbock Dispatch
My name is Clyde Barrow and I am a thief, a murderer and a product
of wealth inequality.
You may know me from the shenanigans I got caught up in with the
love of my life, Bonnie Parker. Most folks think Bonnie and Clyde got cut down
in a hail of bullets outside of Sailes, Louisiana in 1934, and most folks
figured we got what was coming to us — neither is exactly true.
I ain’t proud of the things we done, but I’m not exactly ashamed
either. I wish no one had died, that’s for certain, but when the system is stacked
against you from the get go, things are going to turn out bad. I always say,
you kick a dog long enough, one day, you’re gonna get bit.
In my day, it was the Great Depression that lit the fuse. Right before
that was what they called the Gilded Age, with the Robber Barons — the captains
of industry — rigging all the laws, so them and their pals could carve off
bigger and bigger slices of the pie until the whole thing came crashing down
like an outhouse in a tornado.
You think it was the rich that suffered? If you know your history,
you know that ain’t true. It was the poor folks who live hand-to-mouth who paid
the price. Me and my family, our neighbors, we was the ones standing in soup
lines and living under bridges, with no jobs and no hope.
As a result of that, I grew up dirt poor in Cement City, a little
hellhole outside of Dallas, Texas. There wasn’t but two ways to make it out of
Cement City: dead or in prison.
I tried to play it square, tried to get a job, but there wasn’t no
jobs to be had and what there was didn’t pay enough scratch to get by. Sound
familiar?
Rooting around in the dirt for a dying wage, like a hog under an
acorn tree, well that wasn’t for me. No sir. I figured if the fat cats could
take what they wanted, I could too. Only problem was, when some no-account like
me steals a broken-down car or a truck full of turkeys, well them old boys running
America, well, they just couldn’t have that.
Right away I ended up in jail — and they made me work for free inside
prison. The bosses, them at owned the prisons, actually profited by keeping me locked up. The prisons today are full of young
men and women who try to get by selling weed, but they sure ain’t overcrowded
with the Wall Street sharks that caused the latest Great Recession and stole
hundreds of millions in the process.
Ain’t we learned nothing from history? Can’t hardly believe were
running through the same thing today. The robber barons damn near ruined this
country, and they’re about to do it again.
Me and Bonnie helped out in 1934 by keeping old FDR safe from an
assassin so he could put in the New Deal, giving the working man a voice with
unions, regulating Wall Street and so on. But money has its own gravity, and
now the super-rich are pulling the government levers behind the scenes to make
it even harder for the working class, even though they tell us to our faces
that they ain’t.
In this day and age, wealth inequality is even worse than at the
height of the robber barons in the 1930s. Right now, in America, the top ten
percent of the country controls damn near 80 percent of the wealth. And it gets
worse the richer they are. What do they need all that money for?
They’re spending billions trying to convince us about some trickle-down
nonsense. Saying if they get taxed less and if they don’t have no regulations
and if the government doesn’t invest in public programs it will all be
magically better for the working man! That’s a load of manure. It wasn’t true
in 1929 and it sure as hell ain’t true now. That’s like saying the working
class might get a few more scraps falling from the rich folks’ dinner table if
they just pile up even more mountains of food on their fancy plates. It’s all a
damn lie.
Got to be blind to not see that we’re speeding head first into
something even worse than the Great Depression. Don’t know why rich people
can’t just do the right thing. Recognize that profits are for everyone working
to make them, not just to be hoarded by the ones lucky enough to own the
capital. There’s more than enough money to go around, still leaving plenty for
the rich to have their yachts and jets.
I ain’t suggesting people pick up guns and start robbing and
running, like me and Bonnie. That won’t get you nowhere but in jail or dead in
a ditch. But I am suggesting folks wise up to the real criminals who keep bleeding
the working class, squeezing the disenfranchised and lining their pockets, all
from the tops of their gilded towers.
Me and Bonnie may have been murderers and thieves, but we knew
what we were doing was wrong. I ain’t so sure about this new crop of Robber Barons.
That scares me more than looking down the barrel of a Tommy gun.
CHECK OUT THE TRAILER FOR RESURRECTION ROAD, BOOK ONE IN THE BONNIE AND CLYDE SERIES:
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5/16/18
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Excerpt
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5/17/18
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Review
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5/18/18
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Author Interview
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5/19/18
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Notable Quotable
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5/20/18
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Review
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5/21/18
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Character Interview
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5/22/18
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Notable Quotable
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5/23/18
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Review
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5/24/18
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Guest Post
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5/25/18
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Review
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He makes a lot of good sense for a thief and a murderer, who is also dead. Thanks for helping spread the word about our books!
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