But how much of what you read is real? A lot, though I don’t claim to be a historian. A lot is from my imagination, too. Much of the imagined elements are because there are varying accounts of Bonnie’s and Clyde’s lives and their run-ins with the law. I took what I could find and ran with it.
The name Bonnelyn is an example of something I crafted. Even before I wrote a single word, I imagined Clyde to be the one to coin the name Bonnie. Then I went searching for a name that could truly show her evolution from a church-going gal to the image we all have of Bonnie as an infamous outlaw. Bonnelyn has a nice wholesome ring to it, wouldn’t you say?
Bonnie was the middle child. Buster was her older brother, Billie her little sister. Emma, a seamstress, was her mother’s real name. Their dog was even named Duke. They lived in Cement City. Her daddy, Henry, did die when Bonnie was young, but he wasn’t in the war. He was a bricklayer. Not much about Bonnie’s childhood or background is known, but I tried to pull as much as I could. She was a good student. She married Roy Thornton (though she did so at sixteen). He did leave her multiple times (even more times than I depicted in this story) and turned out to be a pretty bad dude. In real life, Bonnie also dropped out of school. Was it because of the stock market crash? Probably not. But since the market crashed during the timeframe of my story, I wanted to show a plausible way in which the crash could have affected Bonnie and her motivations.
Bonnie and Clyde both came from poverty and wanted more for themselves.
Bonnie’s love of films and music, performing in school pageants and talent shows, working at Marco’s Café, her tattoo, sneaking Clyde a gun in jail … also all true, although I took creative liberties with specific details.
Clyde, he’s a mixture of real and make-believe as well. He had an older brother, Buck, but I didn’t include their five other siblings. Clyde didn’t have a little sister who was struck by a train.
But he was from a poor farming family who later owned the Star Service Station on Eagle Ford Road in West Dallas. Clyde did have aspirations to find farmland again for his family. One of his first arrests was for stealing turkeys for the holidays. It’s also based on real life that he got himself in trouble for not returning a rental car and for robbing Buell Lumber, along with many other businesses. Clyde did get a USN tattoo, tried to enlist in the navy, and received a medical rejection because of a childhood illness, possibly malaria. It’s also true that, although Clyde’s hearing was damaged, he had an ear and knack for the guitar.
And he sure did fall for Bonnie instantaneously.
If you kept cursing me for making you wait for Bonnie to officially meet Clyde, that’s because they didn’t do so until Bonnie was nineteen. I hope it was worth the wait. There are various accounts of how this happened, so I had my own fun with it, borrowing a favorite pastime of the Roaring Twenties: dance marathons. There was simply no way I could write a book set in the 1920s and not put us in the middle of a foxtrot. Bonnie’s speakeasy life, in general, is one I fabricated, including shifting the release year of Fats Waller’s song “Ain’t Misbehavin’” from 1929 to 1927. I read accounts of Bonnie and Clyde going to juice joints, but your guess is as good as mine if she ever served drinks in one or crooned onstage.
Blanche is a real member of the Barrow Gang, but I gave her some extra love in my book. She didn’t meet Buck until 1929, after he’d been divorced twice and had a few kids, details I chose to leave out. However, Blanche’s voice is one of the first that spoke to me and because, in real life, she had a large role (although it turned out to be a reluctant one) in Bonnie and Clyde’s life of crime, I wanted her to be heavily involved in Bonnie’s fictional life leading up to their crime spree. Bonnie and Blanche weren’t childhood best friends, but I think their depicted relationship works well in the story, and I had such a good time writing their banter and made-up history.
There’s a lot more I could mention. Emma didn’t have cancer and Buck was never stabbed (to my knowledge). Clyde really was a short dude with big ears. Their song lyrics are all mine. But I want to keep this (relatively) short; you did just read a novel, after all. If there’s anything I didn’t include here that you’re curious about being fact or fiction, please feel free to ask. You can find me at jennilwalsh.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JENNI L. WALSH has spent the past decade enticing readers as an award-winning advertising copywriter. Her passion lies in transporting readers to another world, be it in historical or contemporary settings. She is a proud graduate of Villanova University and lives in the Philly ’burbs with her husband, daughter, son, and goldendoodle. You can sign up for email updates here.