Willow Jule

Do you consider yourself a good person?

Have you ever made a big mistake?

Have you ever felt lucky that your mistake did not ruin your life?

This story is about a good person who made a big mistake and paid for it for the rest of her life.

It's 1932 and the country is amid a sexual revolution. Willow Jule finds Phoenix a perfect escape from her mundane relationship with her husband, a veteran who is nearly twice her age and struggles with drug addiction.

This sets the stage for Jack, a charming, smooth-talking successful Phoenix businessman. Like many other men in his social circle, he sends his wife and children north in the summer to escape the Arizona heat, allowing him to party with young women only too happy to lavish attention in exchange for money or gifts.

Willow's religious, conservative upbringing in rural Indiana in no way prepares her for the unconventional life she is about to enter. When she meets Jack, emboldened by her roommates, sparks fly, and she makes an age-old mistake - confusing sex with love. That mistake results in two murders fueled by jealousy.

Willow Jule lands in jail and a sensational trial is funded by the yellow journalist William Randolph Hearst. Hearst doesn't care about Willow or her circumstances. He just wants her sensational story for his newspapers. Willow's name becomes a household word. The result is a woman losing most of her adult life, either to incarceration or to time on the lam.

This book is inspired by the true story of Winnie Ruth Judd. There are times when the narrative seems preposterous. Well...those parts are real. But what about the events filling in around those parts? Those are fiction and come from the author's imagination. Or do they?