Riding on the Edge: A Motorcycle Outlaw's Tale

Ride with author John Hall into the turbulent world of 1960s bike club culture, from the time he joined an upstart motorcycle club from Dixie, and rose to become Long Island chapter president of the Pagans, a club that the FBI called "the most violent criminal organization in America." Follow him into the Pagan heartland of Pennsylvania where he fell in love, got in a roadhouse brawl over a honky-tonk angel, and eventually went to jail for "takin' care a club business." Now after a career as a journalist and college professor, he returns to the violent days of his youth and smashes up stereotypes like he once smashed up bars, resurrecting long-dead brothers, in a style reminiscent of Jack Kerouac and Mark Twain. Hall presents them as they really were: hard living, hard loving, hard drinking, hard fighting rebels, but also hardworking, patriotic, loyal, and lovable characters, and a band of brothers whose outlandish behavior forged an all-American outlaw legend in the tradition of Jesse James, Doc Holliday, John Dillinger, and Pretty Boy Floyd. Outlaws yes, but outlaws as American as apple pie.

This is the story, outrageous but true, of John Hall, a Harley-riding hell raiser who founded the Pagans, a club the FBI called "the most violent criminal organization in America," and ended up in the Pennsylvania state penitentiary after a roadhouse brawl over a honky-tonk angel. Riding on the Edge describes John’s riotous ride through the tumultuous decade of the 1960s, doing his damnedest to die young and leave a good-looking corpse. And it tells how one man bucked the system, first as a hell-bent biker, and then as an ex-con with the chutzpah to challenge the state of Pennsylvania.