Author(s): Nuala O'Faolain

Biography/Memoir

Nuala O'Faolain received critical acclaim for her candid memoirs Are You Somebody? and Almost There. Here, she embraces the life of a notorious criminal, an unrepentant and enigmatic daughter of Ireland - Chicago May. Legend says that May was a mesmerizing beauty, with startling blue eyes and hair spun of red and gold who captured the hearts of men wherever she went. At nineteen, she stole her family's savings and ran away from her home in rural Ireland to America, arriving first at Nebraska. May then travelled to Chicago and onto New York where she worked in a variety of unsavoury jobs and was soon hailed in tabloids as a 'Queen of the Underworld'. But this was nothing in comparison with what was to follow. In 1901, May had fallen in love with big-time criminal Eddie Guerin and followed him to Paris where together, they robbed the American Express. But they were both caught and sent to prison. She survived, returning to America to reinvent herself again and again until her death in 1929. First published September 2005.