The Texas Book Festival has invited me to speak about The Trials of Eroy Brown.
I will appear Sunday, October 23 at Room E 2.014 in the Capitol Extension.
The book festival is one of the great events in Austin, with 250 writers appearing, including several national figures such as Susan Orlean and Stacey Schiff.
I’m looking forward to meeting Jeff Guinn, author of a terrific book on Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker that was helpful for the Eroy Brown book. Barrow has been so glamorized by the movies that we tend to forget his hatred of Texas prisons. He went into the Eastham prison as a car thief, but after he was raped by a building tender and beaten by prison officials, he came out a cold-blooded killer, bent on stealing enough guns and money to break his friends out.
Like Lawrence Brewer, the ex-convict who was executed last week for killing a black man in Jasper, Texas, Clyde Barrow was a product of the Texas prison system.
