Becoming Bonnie

Becoming Bonnie is a historical novel by Jenni L. Walsh, published in 2017. It is a fictional account of the young woman who became Bonnie Parker, and it is set in Dallas in the summer of 1927.

Bonnelyn Parker is far more likely to belt out a church hymn than to sling drinks in an illicit juice joint. She intends to overcome her family's poverty, provide for herself and perhaps one day marry her boyfriend, Roy Thornton. When financial trouble jeopardises those ambitions she finds salvation in an unlikely place: Dallas's newest speakeasy, where she takes a night job while maintaining her wholesome daytime identity. Roy discovers her secret life as a moll and embraces it rather too enthusiastically, and the double life draws her towards a convicted felon named Clyde Barrow, whose interest in her changes what she is able to imagine for herself.

The novel is a portrait of a woman before the legend attached itself to her name, and it concentrates on the circumstances that made a partnership in crime look like a way out of a dead end. It is the first of two books by the same author about Bonnie Parker.