Photo by Thomas Burchfield; wood sculpture by John Radostain

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Now Available in E-book Editions: "The Uglies!"


Cover design by M.S. Corley


THE UGLIES: A CRIME SAGA
Original Screenplay
by Thomas Burchfield

The place: America. The time: closer than we may realize.

Unemployment is in high double-digits. The stench of violent discontent smokes the air. The 1930s Great Depression all over . . .

. . . but yesterday is now today . . .

Arch and Tess Uglias are blue-collar residents of the desolate Rust Belt city of Gary, Indiana. Arch, an unemployed auto-plant worker and ex-race car driver, and Tess, an unemployed nurse, are both staring homelessness and starvation in face.

Meanwhile, Frank Regis, an aging disciple of the legendary bank robber Willie Sutton, is masterminding a string of bank robberies throughout Indiana. The Regis gang is a fractious collage of professional criminals, like Frank, and formerly law-abiding folks who have turned to crime out of desperation.

After one of their drivers is killed during a getaway, the Regis gang goes in search of a replacement, a road that leads them to Arch Uglias. Though a law-abiding citizen and square guy his whole life, Arch, like some of the other gang members, feels compelled to take the wheel. Tess meanwhile, becomes an outspoken, unwilling, uncooperative part of the package.

From there, it’s a boisterous, bawdy, and dangerous drive through a desperate world for the Regis mob, from the ruins of the Midwest to the ruins of the West Coast with ruthless law enforcement in pursuit and mistrust and murder stirring among them. In the end, the war that has been raging around the edges suddenly draws them into its bloody vortex, leading to a fierce climax of double cross and desperate escape.

The Uglies an original screenplay by Thomas Burchfield (Dragon’s Ark, Whackers), takes the same wild roads as such classics as Bonnie and Clyde and Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway. It is a wild and wooly saga about crime and pursuit, friendship and survival. It’s also the story of people who realize the need to stick together as the world around them crumbles to pieces.

To order your copy, go the sidebar on the right side of the screen.



Copyright 2012 by Ambler House Publishing.