Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce

Category: Action, Adults, Adventure, Novel
Language: English
Keywords: Chain Gang Fugitive Paul Newman Prison

Written by Donn Pearce
Read by Mark Hammer
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 56 Kbps
Unabridged

Out of his experiences working on a chain gang, Donn Pearce created Cool Hand Luke, the larger-than-life war hero–Good Guy Number One–turned drunkard, vandal, and convict. A blasphemer and “pretty evil feller” who “could work the hardest, eat the mostest, and tell the biggest lies.” Luke’s outsized feats of gambling and gluttony–he bets Society Red, a college man from Boston, that he can eat fifty eggs–and his harrowing escapes and recaptures are recounted by Dragline, who followed Luke in his last, fatal escape attempt and who basks in Luke’s reflected glory. To the convicts left behind on the chain gang, Luke has become the hope of freedom and defiance that they dare not act upon themselves. Luke’s refusal to “git his mind right” and submit to the sadistic discipline of the Walking Boss becomes part of their mythology of survival.

Published in 1965, this classic story of Cool Hand Luke, the defiant survivor who refused to be defeated by the forces of corrupt authority, is earthy, sensitively written, and revealing.

It was adapted into the 1967 movie of the same name starring Paul Newman.