In 1934, sixteen-year-old Weldon Avery Holland encounters Bonnie and Clyde after one of their notorious armed robberies. Weldon is smitten by Bonnie, but a confrontation with the outlaws ends with Weldon firing a gun, unsure whether it hit its mark.

Ten years later, Weldon barely survives the Battle of the Bulge, in the process saving the lives of his sergeant and a young Spanish prisoner of war, Rosita Lowenstein—a woman who holds the same romantic power over him as Bonnie Parker. The three return to Texas where Weldon gets in on the ground floor of the nascent oil business.

In just a few years’ time Weldon will spar with the jackals of the industry, rub shoulders with dangerous men, and win and lose fortunes twice over. But it is the prospect of losing his one true love that will spur his most reckless act yet—one inspired by that encounter long ago with the outlaws of his youth.

“One of the most hopeful and ambitious books he’s ever written . . . Burke seems to get better and better with every book.”
—Benjamin Percy for Poets & Writers

“Burke at his best—vivid, finely wrought, highly evocative writing. . . . A wonderful slice of midcentury American life overlaid with the roiling drama of individual lives as only Burke can portray them.”
—Booklist (starred review)