Leavenworth Train: A Fugitive's Search for Justice in the Vanishing West [Paperback]

Joe Jackson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 28, 2002

For twenty-four years Frank Grigware ran from the law. Convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sentenced in 1909 to life in Leavenworth, America’s first federal penitentiary, Grigware joined five other inmates in a daring escape. The six men hijacked a supply train and rammed it through the prison’s west gate. Investigative journalist Joe Jackson, four-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and 2002 Edgar Award nominee for Best Fact Crime book, follows a young, guileless Grigware in a journey not to fabulous adventure in America’s legendary West but rather to an ill-fated association with train robbers—and to his arrest and soon, imprisonment. Five months later, Grigware would be journeying again, this time in desperate flight across the Canadian border to a new life as a husband, father, and mayor. Grigware’s story is also the story of the Pinkerton detective agency and of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, which sought Grigware through the 1920s and ’30s. It culminates in a meticulously documented, revealing examination of criminal justice in two nations, when Grigware is apprehended by Canadian Mounties and the Canadian government refuses to extradite to the United States “the sort of man we want settling our land”—with results more surprising than fiction. Eight pages of photographs complete this tale of America's most elusive fugitive. “A journalistic meditation on frustrated fantasies, crime, punishment, justice and absolution.... Absorbing.... Meticulously documented.”—Washington Post “Gripping.”—The Economist

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Renowned for violence and lawlessness, the American frontier was in reality a safe and orderly region, at least by 19th-century standards. Alcoholism and suicide were persistent troubles, and, to be sure, the occasional murder or crime against property troubled the populace. Still, such things did not happen often, and when they did, justice was swift and punishment severe.

Frank Grigware, the protagonist of Joe Jackson's swift-moving Leavenworth Train, learned all this the hard way. Not particularly bright, plagued by hard luck, the young man devoted himself to petty thievery, scratching out a dishonest living in the rough mining towns of the Northwest. His fortunes turned still worse when he fell into the company of a gang of suspected train robbers. Charged as an accomplice to their crimes on what Jackson considers to be less than solid evidence, he was packed off to the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary to serve a long sentence. He didn't remain behind bars for long, however. He and three fellow convicts escaped by hijacking a supply train, and Grigware kept running until he reached Canada, where he took up residence and lived out a long life. His identity was eventually revealed, and American officials--among them J. Edgar Hoover--demanded to have him returned.

To reveal who won would spoil Jackson's story. In telling it, Jackson relies heavily on imagined dialogue, and his prose is sometimes overly mannered ("instead of a cave of gold, they found a grimy cell," "everyone danced Death's crazy reel"). Still, his tale is full of unlikely twists that keep it moving along nicely, and fans of Western history and true crime alike will enjoy reading it. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Wrongly sentenced in 1909 to life in the brutal Leavenworth prison, the first federal prison in the U.S., Frank Grigware busted out and hijacked a train with several other convicts. For 24 years, he evaded the law, ending up in Canada as a family man and mayor of a small town. Leavenworth Train: A Fugitive's Search for Justice in the Vanishing West, by four-time Pulitzer-nominee Joe Jackson (coauthor of Dead Run: The Shocking Story of Dennis Stockton and Life on Death Row in America), recounts Grigware's saga, J. Edgar Hoover's manhunt and the international tensions that arose when Canada refused to hand Grigware over to the U.S. B&w photos.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf (August 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786710608
• ISBN-13: 978-0786710607
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,843,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Exciting and Thoughtful Tale of Justice Delayed, June 9, 2002

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Leavenworth Train: A Fugitive's Search for Justice in the Vanishing West (Hardcover)

In 1906, the twenty year old Frank Grigware announced to his family that he was going to see the world. They had been living in eastern Washington for years, and he wanted to see more of the West than Spokane. His mother understood completely; it is not an uncommon occurrence for a young man to want to roam before settling down to respectable ways. He hooked up with his best friend Frank Golden, and they figured they would do some prospecting in northern Idaho. A tough life loomed, but Grigware had no idea that he would as a result be accused and convicted of a crime he did not commit, incarcerated in the toughest prison in existence, escape from the prison, and remain on the lam from his country for the rest of his life. The astonishing story of Grigware's life is told in _Leavenworth Train: A Fugitive's Search for Justice in the Vanishing West_ (Carroll & Graf) by Joe Jackson, who shows that Grigware was guilty of nothing but naïveté when he associated with train robbers. He was, however, found as guilty as the rest of them, and a quick decision gave all the defendants life imprisonment, at Leavenworth, the first US federal penitentiary.

It was only six months into his sentence that Grigware, who the prisoners could tell was not really one of them, was let in on an escape by four other prisoners. Using the classic ploy of threatening with guns skillfully crafted of wood from one of the shops and blackened with shoe polish, they hijacked a train that regularly supplied the prison. Grigware was the only one not captured quickly, and for the next 24 years was one of America's most wanted men. The trail was long cold, even after President Woodrow Wilson commuted the sentence of the other robbers because the evidence in the case was so lacking. The FBI refused to back down, and it spied on members of Grigware's family, which was sadly fractured by his escape. Grigware in sorrow knew he could communicate with none of them, but set up a respectable life in Canada, becoming a Canadian citizen and a well-liked member of the community of Jasper, Alberta. He was not found until 1934, and what happened afterwards is of great charm. There was a groundswell of Canadian public opinion against any sort of extradition; even the game warden circulated a petition. The mild Grigware had made many friends, and he was the sort of reliable citizen Canadians wanted. Grigware's wife (who had not known of his past), when the press reported her simple statement, "Nothing will ever break up our home," made up the minds of any Canadians that had doubts on the issue. It became an international incident, and a clash of redemptive versus retributive justice.

Grigware was reunited with his family, which had long thought him dead; the meeting with his aging mother could not have been sweeter. But he could not return with her to the US, nor return for her funeral. President Roosevelt waived extradition, but no pardon was ever issued, so if he ever came back to the US, he could land right in Leavenworth again. That result would seem preposterous as the decades went by, but in 1957, J. Edgar Hoover was still sending out directives that insisted that agents monitor Grigware's relatives in case he were to show up. Every FBI memo issued about him screamed that HE WOULD KILL OR BE KILLED RATHER THAN BE RECAPTURED, a rumor that had arisen in 1911 and which still headlined Hoover's directives about Grigware, who was then seventy-one years old. This exciting and frustrating story, crammed with period detail, reminds us that courts are not always right and that as much justice as was available in this case came from the hearts of ordinary women and men.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stylish history and an engaging story, September 8, 2001

By 

Ron Franscell, Author of 'Sourtoe Cocktail Club' - See all my reviews

This review is from: Leavenworth Train: A Fugitive's Search for Justice in the Vanishing West (Hardcover)

Veteran Virginia crime journalist Jackson strips bare a capricious justice system as "the servant of time and place and ambition." In that, this book is a philosophical sequel to his Pulitzer-nominated "Dead Run," a contemporary exploration of Death Row.

Jackson is an immensely appealing writer and a graceful reporter. "Leavenworth Train" is meticulously documented, but the engaging narrative flows seamlessly. Grigware was dead long before Jackson took up his story, but the haunted fugitive comes alive in these absorbing pages, a headlong flight into justice and mercy.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read, July 18, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Leavenworth Train: A Fugitive's Search for Justice in the Vanishing West (Hardcover)

I picked this book up on a whim and once started I couldn't put it down. It is a great true story of the real old west. Young men seeking adventure, train robbers, unjust imprisonmemnt, daring escapes and more. You should really give this one a try!