Careen

Bonnie and Clyde are the stuff of legend – why tell their story again? Well, Carolyn Smart’s Careen lets the principal actors relate their own tale, which is not only that of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, but also of Buck Barrow and his third wife Blanche, of the other members of the Barrow family, including Cumie, the mother, and Henry, the father, as well as various members of what became known as the Barrow gang, and then the lawman hired to hunt them down, and the father-and-son pair who betrayed them. Careen is a book of voices speaking out of the desperate dirty thirties, when normal life in the USA was curtailed and young people like Bonnie and Clyde – not the most disciplined and conforming sorts – found their own way to sow the wild oats of youth. Why tell this again? Chances are you don’t know the nuances – the love story of Bonnie and Clyde, of Blanche and Buck, the aspirations of each, their conflicts, their prayerful natures, and ultimately the sources of their tragedy. The publicizing and falsifying role of media is charted in documents drawn from the newspapers of the day. Careen is a complex, dramatic rendering of a familiar story made new.