The Newton Boys: Portrait of an Outlaw Gang

by Willis Newton, Joe Newton, Claude Stanush

Portrays the misdeeds of the notorious early twentieth-century bank and train robbers. The Newtons' story was made into a movie starring Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke, and Julianna Margulies.

"Bonnie and Clyde was just silly kids bound to get themselves killed. We wasn't at all like them. We wasn't thugs. All we wanted was the money, just like doctors, lawyers and other businessmen. Robbing banks and trains was our way of getting it. That was our business."

Willis Newton (from the book)

332 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started out just loving this book. The gentlemen who extensively interviewed Willis and Joe (the two brothers still living in 1973, the time when this project was begun) are very clearly dedicated to letting these two men tell their story in their own words (well, mostly Willis--the admitted ringleader--tells their story, with brief, sparse asides or inclusions of small details from Joe, who even in his 70s still plays the role of baby brother in his differing to Willis, some 10+ years older), to the point that the narrative is transcribed verbatim from the original tape recordings. This allows the reader to feel intimately close to the brothers, as their good old boy vernacular and aw-shucks demeanor--even as elderly men--is quite endearing. However, because Willis literally only had a few weeks of formal education in his whole life, he doesn't always articulate well, which sometimes left me having to decipher his meaning. Add to this the fact that the interviews were transcribed EXACTLY from the tapes, and there's a lot of mitigating language that just gets tiresome after a while (the interviewers did edit out any false-starts and/or repeats of stories, but the ums, ahs, uhs, and the like are all there in print). Because I live in the area where this gang operated (I've even had dinner in the vault of one of the banks they robbed in San Marcos...obviously, it's not a bank anymore!), I was happy to plow through some of the more irritating things I've mentioned here, but I'm afraid that anyone with less of a personal/local interest just wouldn't be able to plow through Willis Newton's vernacular very enjoyably for near 300 pages.

[Lenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stories of wayward youths from a bygone era. Good descriptions of how things were back in the early days of Texas. A fun read.