Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral

Convincing and believable characters in a historical setting I believed that I knew much about, about written with an excellent use of period believable dialogue. Highly recommended and I am off to visit the back catalogue of the writer. In Corona virus lock down mode, so this was an exceptionally good read to immerse myself in. It was sitting on a bookshelf for a fair time in my study and I am so glad I finally got around to reading it. I have read many books and watched many films about this subject and characters and I so enjoyed and related to this writer's perceptive take on them. So hard to have a new approach on such well trodden territory. Kudos to Ms Russell

This book is really well written and sounds very well researched. The impression is of a very realistic portrayal of life in the wild west, warts and all. If you are interested in this era I think you will love this book.

An excellent book, I really enjoyed it.

Russell begins her brilliant new novel and follow up to her wonderful book DOC by asking the reader to stop reading. Instead she asks that we look at a clock for just 30 seconds and “…imagine one half of a single minute so terrible it will pursue you all your life and far beyond the grave.” For the famous gun fight of western myth and legend was fought at Tombstone’s O.K. Corral and took all of a half a minute. Without it we may not remember Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday or the men they faced and without the newspapers, dime novels and the then political and sectional animosities we may never have heard of the gunfight either. In Russell’s earlier western DOC we followed Doc Holliday and his journey and new friendship with Wyatt Earp in Dodge City (really more with Wyatt’s younger brother Morgan). It’s a wonderful novel that serves now as a sequel to EPATAPH and although Doc Holliday is prominently featured in this new book we now become fully invested in the story of Wyatt Earp, his brothers, family, and the life and relationship with the various Earp brother’s women and Sarah Marcus, the budding actress and daughter of a San Francisco Baker. (If you saw and enjoyed the movie Tombstone you will remember Sarah romancing Wyatt and there living happily ever after. And although the movie version was partially correct the real story is much darker and real and full of heartbreak.) Epitaph is as much Sarah’s story as it is Wyatt’s or Doc’s. (I suggest reading both books in order but either one stands alone as fine individual works if you choose not too.) Russell’s EPITAPH at 577 pages is more epic than just debunking myth and legend and retelling a familiar. It kicks up the dust of Tombstone and it hurts you when you feel Doc Holliday try and breathe it. The dusty streets and rugged stage coach rides, the silver mining, the holdups (look if you want to really holdup a stage just kill one of the horses) and the wooden building so easily burned by fire and rebuilt by an involved rich community. Some of the bad guys were actually not that bad and some of the good guys were actually not that good. They all had stories to tell and versions of events they believed to be the truth. The actual O.K. Corral gun fight itself was personal but the legal issue was that of gun control. No guns were allowed by law in Tombstone and the Earps were enforcing the law on those who refused to disarm. (This law was also true in Dodge City when the Earps were the law there.) The Earps were Yankee Republicans and most of the population in Arizona at the time was Confederate Democrats. And it seems everyone had their own Sherriff or Marshall. Even the Cow Boys who were a gang that rode into Mexico and rustled cattle to fatten and sell in Arizona knew they were breaking the law but they always got away with it so they grew to view the border as merely an inconvenient technicality. This telling is, of course, a novel but Russell has studied and researched events and her version and details read true. I am often left disappointed by the ending of novels but Russell has crafted a brilliant final act that reads as an epilog and for Wyatt Earp. Her ending, which is really our ending, is a fitting if not wholly deserved Epitaph for Wyatt Earp. As Doc Holliday might have said if he had lived to see what Mary Doria Russell has done in the writing and telling of both his story and the story of his friend Wyatt…. “By god those books of hers are daisies”. I simply loved both these books.

Having already read Mary Doria Russell's other book 'Doc' which deals with the period up to Doc Holliday's arrival in Tombstone, this book concentrates on the events leading up to the Gunfight at the OK Corral and the aftermath. Wonderfully written with insights into the characters, especially the women partners of all the Earps and Doc Holliday. Having visited Tombstone many times, this book really takes me back there to 1881 and that fateful day in October. I couldn't put it down.