The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (45 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Anyone wishing to learn more about the real-life bank robbers of the Great
Depression should read Bryan Burrough’s definitive history,
Public
Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34
.
Also helpful to the author were
Pretty Boy
by Michael Wallis,
The
Dillinger Days
by John Toland,
Hard Times
by Studs Terkel,
The
Hungry Years
by T. H. Watkins,
The Case That Never Dies: The Lindbergh
Kidnapping
by Lloyd C. Gardner,
Public Enemies: America’s Criminal
Past, 1919-1940
, by William Helmer with Rick Mattix, and
Daily Life in
the United States, 1920–1940
, by David E. Kyvig. For a list of other
works the author found inspiring during the research and writing of this book,
please go to [http://www.thomasmullen.net] www.thomasmullen.net.
A tip of the fedora to my agent, Susan Golomb; my editors, Jennifer Hershey and
Laura Ford; and everyone else at Random House for their hard work. Big thanks
to Lloyd Gardner for his fine historical eye. A two-Tommy-gun salute goes to my
family, and a wink and a smile to Jenny.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THOMAS MULLEN was born in 1974, raised in Rhode Island, and graduated from
Oberlin College. His first novel,
The Last Town on Earth
, was named Best
Debut Novel of 2006 by
USA Today
, was a
Chicago Tribune
Best Book
of the Year, a
New York Times
Editor’s Choice, and was awarded the
James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction. He lives in
Atlanta with his wife and son.

The Many Deaths
of the Firefly Brothers
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Mullen
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Mullen, Thomas.
The many deaths of the Firefly Brothers: a novel / Thomas Mullen.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-971-0
1. Brothers—Fiction. 2. Criminals—Fiction. 3. Bank
robberies—Fiction.
4. Death—Fiction. 5. Depressions—1929—Fiction.
6. Middle West—Fiction. 7. Suspense fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.U447M36 2010
813?.6—dc22 2009019712
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