Synopses & Reviews
Mary Doria Russell, the bestselling, award-winning author of
The Sparrow, returns with
Epitaph. An American
Iliad, this richly detailed and meticulously researched historical novel continues the story she began in
Doc, following Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday to Tombstone, Arizona, and to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
A deeply divided nation. Vicious politics. A shamelessly partisan media. A president loathed by half the populace. Smuggling and gang warfare along the Mexican border. Armed citizens willing to stand their ground and take law into their own hands. . . .
That was America in 1881.
All those forces came to bear on the afternoon of October 26 when Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers faced off against the Clantons and the McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. It should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest. Thirty seconds and thirty bullets later, three officers were wounded and three citizens lay dead in the dirt.
Wyatt Earp was the last man standing, the only one unscathed. The lies began before the smoke cleared, but the gunfight at the O.K. Corral would soon become central to American beliefs about the Old West.
Epitaph tells Wyatts real story, unearthing the Homeric tragedy buried under 130 years of mythology, misrepresentation, and sheer indifference to fact. Epic and intimate, this novel gives voice to the real men and women whose lives were changed forever by those fatal thirty seconds in Tombstone. At its heart is the woman behind the myth: Josephine Sarah Marcus, who loved Wyatt Earp for forty-nine years and who carefully chipped away at the truth until she had crafted the heroic legend that would become the epitaph her husband deserved.
Review
“Well-written and provocative, Doc is a book that will haunt you.” Historical Novels Review
Review
Despite all that has been written and filmed about Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, Russells pointedly anti-epic anti-romance is so epic and romantic that it whets the readers appetite for more.” Kirkus Reviews
Review
“Russell shows how the gunfight at the OK Corral is not the end of a heros tale but just 30 terrible seconds in a decades-long, nationwide struggle to evolve out of ignorance into enlightenment.” Library Journal (starred review)
Review
“Epitaph peels back all the layers of the events leading up to and following Americas most storied gunfight, in a compelling, richly told narrative with complex characters, sharp context - and a number of parallels to today…a fully realized landscape with nuanced characters.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Review
“Russell breathes new life into the well-worn western saga of the Earp brothers and Doc Hollidays infamous shoot-out in the Arizona Territory town of Tombstone… a raucously Hogarthian depiction of how the West was truly lived.” Publishers Weekly
Review
“With vast amounts of research and a poetic prose line … Russell has crafted an epic tale … a stunning performance.” Washington Post
Review
“A magnificent sequel to Doc that represents a significant advance in her considerable narrative technique… Adroitly shifting points of view throughout, Russell assembles her cast in Tombstone, where her prodigious historical research illuminates the personalities and politics that propelled the combatants toward that corral.” Cleveland Plain Dealer
Review
Her writing is so vivid it seems she must have been there. … As Russell says, it matters where a tale begins and ends and “who tells the story and why … That makes all the difference.” Russell has made a big difference in bringing this story to life again. Seattle Times
Review
Russell catalogs [the action] with power and beauty and a calculating eye until, as a reader, …understand something primal about the making of famous moments: That the causes are never as simple as you want, and outcomes never as clean or clear.” NPR Books
Review
“Mary Doria Russell has lifted the participants in the frontiers most famous gunfight out of the realm of genre fiction and catapulted them into the realm of literature.” Dallas Morning News
About the Author
Mary Doria Russell is the author of five previous books, The Sparrow, Children of God, A Thread of Grace, Dreamers of the Day, and Doc, all critically acclaimed commercial successes. Dr. Russell holds a Ph.D. in biological anthropology. She lives in Lyndhurst, Ohio.