My novel, "Nine Times Out of Ten, You Don't Die," is the story of Layla Wisnewski and her quest to write a book about her famous father. In the 1970s, "Big Dan" Wisnewski was a motorcycle stuntman who broke more bones than anyone living. He jumped cars and buses and rivers atop a white Harley Davidson. Big Dan was considered an American Hero. Fast forward forty years, Big Dan has been dead for decades, and his daughter Layla is writing a book about his life. While researching the book, she learns she was kidnapped as a baby. This triggers a domino effect that leads Layla on a trail to uncover the many ways in which she has been lied to over the years and just how dangerous her family really is.

On August 28, 1955, Emmett Louis Till was abducted from the home of his uncle, Mose Wright, near Money, Mississippi. A body was recovered three days later in the nearby Tallahatchie River, which divides Tallahatchie and Leflore Counties, and the body was closer to the Tallahatchie bank of the river. A week later the Grand Jury of Tallahatchie County indicted J. W. Milan and Roy Bryant on separate counts of murder and kidnapping. On September 198, 1955, in Sumner, Mississippi, there began a trial destined to be the most publicized kidnap-murder trial since the Bruno Hauptman case, seventy reporters covered the trial, representing newspapers and magazines from all over the United States and from some foreign countries. Nearly every newspaper in the country gave the case and trial front-page play, as did many of those published in other countries. / Typescript. / A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate School of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Summer Semester, 1963. / "August, 1963" / Includes bibliographical references. / Marion D. Irish, Professor Directing Thesis; William W. Rogers, Committee Member; Malcolm B. Parsons, Committee Member.