Two days before Christmas 1927, Santa Claus entered a Texas bank.
No one expected him to pull a gun.
The fake white beard hid his identity from his neighbors while he and three others took everything. But outside, armed citizens assembled, motivated by a new reward for dead bank robbers. By the time it all played out, one bandit died in the gunfight, one was executed in the electric chair, one swung from a rope in a mob lynching—and one survived to find unexpected hope beyond all his wrong turns.
The press dubbed it “The Santa Claus Bank Robbery.” I first heard about it when I served as pastor in the county where all this took place. Most accounts of the crime end at the lynching of the Santa Claus robber himself. But I’ve always been fascinated by the last survivor. He was released in 1943, and granted a full pardon by Governor John Connally in 1964. By the time he died in the 1990s, he had been a married churchgoing man for decades. In his honor, my novel is called The Last Man.
Back in 2018, my opening chapter was awarded in the Foundations competition for new novelists at the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. I returned home to complete the novel, and it should finally be published this September.
Do you want updates on the countdown to publication? I’ve created a separate newsletter for that. Here's a link to the first edition. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, there's a “Subscribe” button on the top left of that page.
I’ll send updates to subscribers about once a month. I’ll reveal the cover design in February and the launch of the website in March. I’ll post photos of the real characters and places behind the novel. When pre-publication reviews come out and promotional events get scheduled, you’ll be the first to know. I’d love to have you as a subscriber.
I did this on my own time. A pastor is never off the clock, but I decided it counted as “personal time” if I wrote every day from 6:00am until the office opened at 8:30am. The Personnel Committee agreed. Any appearances to promote the book will be scheduled on the time off granted by Personnel Manual.
It’s a story of grace ignored and grace received. I can’t wait for you to read it.
Tom
(The photo is of the alley beside the First National Bank of Cisco. The alley became a shooting gallery as the gang tried to leave the bank by a side door to their getaway car.)
Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.