Overview
I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! is the amazing true story of one man's search for meaning, fall from grace, and eventual victory over injustice. In 1921, Robert E. Burns was a shell-shocked and penniless veteran who found himself at the mercy of Georgia's barbaric penal system when he fell in with a gang of petty thieves. Sentenced to six to ten years' hard labor for his part in a robbery that netted less than $6.00, Burns was shackled to a county chain gang. After four months of backbreaking work, he made a daring escape, dodging shotgun blasts, racing through swamps, and eluding bloodhounds on his way north. For seven years Burns lived as a free man. He married and became a prosperous Chicago businessman and publisher. When he fell in love with another woman, however, his jealous wife turned him in to the police, who arrested him as a fugitive from justice. Although he was promised lenient treatment and a quick pardon, he was back on a chain gang within a month. Undaunted, Burns did the impossible and escaped a second time, this time to New Jersey. He was still a hunted man living in hiding when this book was first published in 1932. The book and its movie version, nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in 1933, shocked the world by exposing Georgia's brutal treatment of prisoners. I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! is a daring and heartbreaking book, an odyssey of misfortune, love, betrayal, adventure, and, above all, the unshakable courage and inner strength of the fugitive himself.
Full Product Details
Author: Robert E. Burns ,
Matthew Mancini
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Imprint: University of Georgia Press
Dimensions:
Width: 0.60cm
, Height: 1.90cm
, Length: 0.90cm
Weight: 0.825kg
ISBN: 9780820352794
ISBN 10: 0820352799
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 01 April 2017
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Language: English
Reviews
The reader will be as much thrilled by the story of the escapes as he will be shocked by the descriptions of chain gang life. --Times Literary Supplement It would be hard to find a more thrilling story in either truth or fiction. --New York Times
It would be hard to find a more thrilling story in either truth or fiction. --New York Times The reader will be as much thrilled by the story of the escapes as he will be shocked by the descriptions of chain gang life. --Times Literary Supplement
It would be hard to find a more thrilling story in either truth or fiction. --New York Times The reader will be as much thrilled by the story of the escapes as he will be shocked by the descriptions of chain gang life. --Times Literary Supplement
Author Information
ROBERT E. BURNS (1891-1955) was a native of Brooklyn, New York. After his sentence was commuted by the state of Georgia in 1945, he worked as a toy store owner, tax consultant, and veterans' affairs archivist.
