The Story of Chicago May

Overview

The story of a female outlaw like no other in history - by the acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author.

Legend says that May was tall with red-gold hair and big blue eyes, compellingly attractive to men. At nineteen, she stole her family's savings and ran away from home in rural Ireland to America where she worked as a confidence trickster, a thief, a showgirl, and a prostitute, notorious as much for her violence as for her diamond rings. The tabloids would dub her "The Queen of the Underworld." Reaching across the decades for points of connection, Nuala O'Faolain brings sympathetic scrutiny to the understanding of an outlaw experience like no other - "a fascinating and haunting book that makes you feel you have stood in the rain of another human life." (Irish Times)

Editorial Reviews

In 1890, 19-year-old May Duignan left her hardscrabble Irish town with her family's savings and set off to create a new life. In a biography that is also a reflection on autobiography, O'Faolain, author of two bestselling memoirs, examines the young woman's transformation into the notorious thief and prostitute Chicago May. Her greatest source is May's own account of her life, which, in significant contrast to modern memoir, is long on action and short on reflection. O'Faolain balances that deficit with smart readings of scattered sources and with evocations of her own life that illuminate the Irish experience in May's time and today. She follows May through the desperate and tough Chicago red light district to the Tenderloin of New York, and then to London, Paris and various prisons. May's opportunities for escape from the life she made came in many forms, including marriage to the black sheep of a respectable New Jersey family and a successful escape with the loot from a heist of the American Express office in Paris. But shortsightedness, loyalty and revenge led her to rebuff each opportunity. While drawing out the lacunae of her story with speculation and description, O'Faolain resists the urge to reinvent or sentimentalize May. The biographer makes herself a complement rather than an intrusion, and May emerges lively, unique and cut from the cloth of Irish and American reinvention. B&w photos not seen by PW. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Author Information

Bio of Nuala O'Faolain

Journalist and author Nuala O'Faolain was born in 1940 and grew up in the countryside near Dublin. Before earning a postgraduate degree in English from Oxford University, she studied English as University College, Dublin and medieval English literature at the University of Hull. She had numerous jobs including a lecturer in the English department at University College; produced programs for Open Door, a community-access documentary department at the BBC; and produced current-affairs television programs for Radio Telifis Eirann. She started writing a weekly opinion column for The Irish Times in 1986. She wrote two memoirs, Are You Somebody? (1996) and Almost There (2003), and two novels, My Dream of You (2001) and The Story of Chicago May (2006). She died of lung cancer on May 9, 2008. 030

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Additional Info

Imprint

Riverhead Trade (Paperbacks)

Filesize

3.36 MB

Number of Pages

368

eBook ISBN

9781440648199

Awards

• Crime Writers' Association Awards