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First I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed, then about the murders which happened later.

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The robbery is the more important part since it served to set my and my sisters lives on the

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courses they eventually followed, nothing would make complete sense without that being told first.

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Our parents were the least likely two people in the world to rob a bank, they weren't strange people,

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not obviously criminals, no-one would have thought they were destined to end up the way they did.

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They were just regular, although, of course, that kind of thinking became null and void

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the moment they did rob a bank.

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I always have liked beginnings that were grabbers, I always liked beginnings that would, you know,

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throw down the gauntlet for the reader. The only problem with a beginning like that is that

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then you've got to have a second act, and sometimes if you don't have a second act,

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if you can't follow up a really good beginning like that with something equally gripping then you might as

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well not have it, because you've just basically created a trap for yourself and sprung it so,

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no I just um, I always, I think when I wrote it I knew it was OK.

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I thought it was just a sort of typical old fashioned narrative hook, and, you know,

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you're going to have a murder down the line here, you're gonna have a bank being robbed

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by my parents, so I thought it was good.

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It's an American family of 4 people, 2 children, twin boy/girl, mother/father, and the father has been

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in the air force since World War II, and the book takes place in 1960.

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Eventually after staying in the air force, he gets out of the air force, and then doesn't really

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know what to do with himself, he's been in the military his whole life, and they live in a little town in

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Great Falls Montana, where none of them have ever lived before, and he just happened to be stationed

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there in the air force.

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And he hatches upon a scheme to sell stolen beef to the railroad, to sell to the dining cart customers on the railroad.

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And he very quickly runs amiss and runs afoul of the Indians who he basically goes into business with to

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kill the beef and deliver it to him, and he finds that he owes them $2,000, which is in 1960

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a considerable sum of money, for half a beef that is somehow or other gone rancid before they can sell it.

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And so in a fit of sort of chaotic lunacy rather than just leaving town in the middle of the night, or

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borrowing the money, because he had no contacts in the town, no collateral, he didn't own anything,

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he determines he will rob a bank and get the money that way.

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And that sets in motion, the book actually.

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And what happens to him and his wife, who is his colleague in this bank robbery, is that they

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are immediately caught, and once they are immediately caught, then the children are left alone,

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and the children fend for themselves.

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I mean I invented that, so I don't really know what relation it bears to most peoples normal thinking.

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I did discover when I was trying to make plausible to myself the idea that 2 people who didn't

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have to rob a bank would rob a bank, that anybody who robs a bank who's not already a hardened,

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criminal, who's not John Dillenger or Pretty Boy Floyd, anybody who's a normal person who robs a bank

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is crazy because they're going to get caught immediately, so all manner of assumptions about

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how you do it and how you get away with it and what happens to you afterwards, are complete lunacy