Overview

The Lonesome Death of Billie Grayson and other Killings in Early-Day Lincoln County is a collection of seven documented nonfiction narratives about killings in early-day Lincoln County, Oklahoma, running from the decade before statehood to the beginning of World War II (1897-1941). The title story recounts the murder of Billie Grayson, an eighteen-year-old woman, found naked and propped against a tombstone in the main cemetery of Chandler, the county seat. The victim, the killer, the prosecuting attorney, and Billie's close companion are vividly resurrected through detailed scrutiny of their lives. Billie's companion was twelve-year-old Helen Grandstaffe, who was the only eyewitness and whose unshakable courage in testifying at the two trials makes her the story's heroine. In this and the other narratives, a detailed exploration of the social background is presented in order to make sense of the messes people make of their lives. Lincoln County, the author explains, boasts no special iniquity, just the average criminality of the state. The killers and their victims are all average. The former include a resentful sharecropper, a pair of drifting women, a migrant oil-field worker, an Otoe Indian angry at his father-in-law, an English immigrant who kills a series of wives, and a black man who in 1941 became the first person from Lincoln County to be sent to the electric chair.

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9781681872636

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