"Where Does the Truth Begin?"
Reviewed by Joanne Bozik
Posted April 21, 2013
Thriller
HARD TWISTED is an electrifying story, one which I didn't
want to end. The author, C. Joseph Greaves is a former LA
trial lawyer who brings some truth to the story, though HARD
TWISTED is
a fictional account of real lives and people. Kudo's to
Joseph Greaves for
his deep research and hard work in writing this impressive
book! The story begins in 1934 when Lucile, 13 years old
and her father, Dillard are homeless and meet up with
Clint Palmer, a sweet talking and very believable drifter
who hides his dark and dangerous sides. Both Lucile and
Dillard put their trust into the hands of Clint, but as
time passes, no one can truly foretell the horrific and
tragic dangers Clint will bring upon them and all others who
cross his path.
Lucile and her father go with Clint to find work and live
in Texas, but soon her father Dillard goes missing. Clint
reassures Lucile that her dad is just fine and they will
meet up with him in the near future. Lucile believes
everything that Clint tells her, but she is unaware that
she's been kidnapped until it's too late. As each day
passes she finds herself depending on Clint more and more,
but Clint is a crazy killer and a sexual predator and
Lucile is at the top of his list for victims.
As a reader,
I sensed that Lucile actually fell in love with Clint and
he with her, but again these are my thoughts, but I doubt
love was long lasting. Sadly, this mixture of hell, love,
and terror for Lucile goes on for one year. Lucile grows up
very fast indeed and learns life can be very cruel for a
young girl of only 13 years old. The story is told through Lucile's perspective. It shows
what she lived through, what others endured, and the life
style she lived with clint and what may have truly happened
in the John's Canyon Murder and the "Skeleton Murder
Trial" during the Great Depression Era. As you read HARD
TWISTED, you will also read excerpts from a fictional trial
which are interlaced with Lucile's story. When Lucile was
on trial as the victim, with an all male jury, more blame
was put on her, then Clint, who was accused of the murders,
thankfully, women have come a long way.
Just a note for future readers: Please read the author's
Notes and Acknowledgements, for you will learn a great deal
of information which led Mr. Greaves to write this chilling
story.
SUMMARY
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.
ExcerptPART ONEChapter OneA ROOSTER AIN’T NO JOB They followed the Frisco tracks with their bodies bent and
hooded, the pebbling wind audible on the back of her
father’s old mackinaw. To the west, a line of T-poles
stretched to a dim infinity before a setting sun that melted
and bled and blended its sanguinary light with the red dirt
and with the red dust that rose up like Hell’s flame in
towering streaks and whorls to forge together earth and sky. Great deal on land! her father called over his shoulder.
Bring your own jar! They came out to the highway and paused there as though to
orient themselves before turning west, the windblown dust in
spectral fingers reaching across the blacktop before them.
First one car passed without stopping, then another. You gettin hungry? No sir. The next vehicle that passed was a slat-sided Ford truck
that slowed and shimmied and veered crazily onto the
shoulder, and as they hurried to meet it she saw through the
swirling loess the crates of pinewood and twist-wire stacked
beneath its flapping canvas tarpaulin. Her father worked the latches and lowered the endgate and
vaulted into the truckbed. She reached a blind hand for him
and felt herself rising, weightless in a grip as hard as
knotted applewood, his mangled finger biting into the soft,
white flesh of her wrist. A bonging sound on the cab roof riled the chickens, and a
voice called out from the lowered window. Get on up front, you dumb Okies! The man looked across her lap and studied her father’s
shoes. He said his name was Palmer, and that he was a
Texan, and a cowboy. He wore sharp sideburns and a clean
Resistol hat cocked forward over pallid eyes gone violet in
the fading glow of sunset, and she could see that he was a
small man -- perhaps no taller than she -- and that there
was something fiercely defiant, something feral, in his
smallness. You get a gander at them gamecocks? the man asked without
taking his eyes from the roadway. Look like right fine birds, her father allowed. The man chuckled. Mister, them’s the gamest fightin
roosters this side of the Red, for your information. That a fact. Damn right that’s a fact. He nodded once. Damn right it
is. You know fightin birds? Her father shrugged, and the man leaned forward to study his
profile before dropping his eyes first to her sweater and
then to her lap, returning at last and again to her father’s
shoes. How long you been outside, cousin? How’s that? The stranger’s smile was sudden, and unnaturally brilliant,
and hot on the side of her neck. So that’s how it is. Do I know you? her father asked, leaning now to face the man. Maybe you do and maybe you don’t, the man said, his ghost
reflection grinning in the darkened windscreen. But I
surely do know you. They’d built a fire in the lee of the ruined house, and her
father squatted before it stirring red flannel hash with a
spoon. The temperature had dropped with the sun and she
wore his mackinaw now like a mantle while he sat his heels
and rubbed his hands and warmed them over the skillet, the
tumbled walls around them shifting and changing, moving
inward and then outward again as though breathing in the
soft orange glow like a living thing. Embers popped, running and skittering with the wind. To the
north she saw other fires speckling the void, and she
studied their positions as an astronomer might chart the
nighttime heavens. More tonight, she said. Her father followed her gaze. These is hard times, honey. Ain’t nobody hirin. Least not
in Hugo, anyways. I was thinkin I might light a shuck for
Durant come sunrise. Man said a mill out there was lookin
for hands. Miz Upchurch could mind you for a day. I don’t need no mindin. He studied her burnished profile, her cheek and lashes
luminous in the fireglow. Tell you what then. You can mind Miz Upchurch. Haul her
water and such. You tell her I’ll be back by nightfall. She wielded a long twig, tracing random patterns in the
dirt. Somewhere beyond the firelight, a car passed on the
highway. Who was that man? Just a man. He said he knowed you. Oh, he didn’t mean like that. More like my kind is what he
meant. What’s your kind? Her father stirred the skillet, and paused, and stirred it
again. He tapped the spoon on the iron rim. Only the good Lord knows what’s in a man’s heart, Lottie.
Happy is the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked
nor walks in the way of sinners. He wiped his nose with his
wrist. That there’s from Psalms. She poked her stick into the fire and withdrew it and blew
out the flame. Then she wrote a secret in the air, and
studied it, and watched it disappear in the wind.
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