Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
2005
Abstract
Oklahoma Tough celebrates the life and career of Wayne Padgett, a thief, fence, arsonist, wife-beater, and alleged murderer. The author, his son Ron Padgett, designed this biography as a tribute to his father, whom he sees as a daring and cunning desperado who was "an extraordinary, generous, exciting, charismatic, man." Relying heavily on interviews with his father's associates, relations, and his own childhood memories, Padgett chronicles the length and breath of his father's criminal involvement as well as the gaudy but sordid way of life of small-time gangsters and their molls.
Comments
Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 25:3 (Summer 2005). Copyright © 2005 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.