NONFICTION - June 6, 1993

OUTLAW YOUNGERS by Marley Brant (Madison Books: $22.95; 368 pp.). Bad guys or family men? Just folks or villains? Marley Brant, a Georgia resident and authority on the Younger brothers--Bob, Cole, Jim and John--offers what must be the definitive history of their violent lives, and attempts to portray them within a social context. Brant suggests that the boys’ outlaw efforts were, in fact, expressions of a frustration that their more civilized Missouri neighbors shared, but were reluctant to express--which would explain why those neighbors were often willing to offer the Youngers a place to hide or an alibi. Brant has a certain sympathy for the Youngers’ efforts at a home life; Bob Younger may have participated in a train robbery in Muncie, Kansas, but he used the money to lease land and a farmhouse for himself, his lady love and her son. In that episode of the gang’s history, the Pinkerton detectives were the villains. Interesting material, but the story is hamstrung by Brant’s somewhat awkward style, as she vacillates between telling a story and reciting historical facts.