Epitaph - by Mary Doria Russell (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

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 Wyatt's 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.

From the Back Cover

A richly detailed novel of the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the making of the mythology that surrounds it to this day

A deeply divided nation. Vicious politics. A shamelessly partisan media. A president scorned 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 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. But thirty seconds and thirty bullets later, three officers were wounded and three citizens lay dead in the dirt. Wyatt Earp was 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.

Mary Doria Russell has unearthed the Homeric tragedy buried beneath 130 years of mythology, misrepresentation, and sheer indifference to fact. Epic and intimate, Epitaph gives voice to the real men and women whose lives were changed forever by those fatal thirty seconds. And at its heart is the woman behind the myth: Josephine Sarah Marcus, who loved Wyatt Earp for almost half a century and who carefully chipped away at the truth until she had crafted the heroic legend that would become the epitaph she believed her husband deserved.

"In depth, scope and nuance, Mary Doria Russell's Epitaph is the best novel yet on the near-mythical events of the Wild West's most famous silver boomtown." --Dallas Morning News

Review Quotes

"This novel tells the story of Wyatt and Sadie Earp from beginning to end, not stopping at the famous gunfight and its aftermath but following the couple to the end of their lives, inevitably shaped by that 1881 blaze of gunfire in Tombstone, Arizona Territory." - Seattle Times, Critics Best Books of 2015

"Whatever it is you think you know about the gunfight at the OK Corral, however it is you think you feel about it, forget it all... Mary Doria Russell has 600 pages to burn a fresh understanding into you, and she uses every one of them." - NPR, Best Books of 2015

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

"A stage robbery, several love affairs, abusive fathers, an early snow, drunkenness, rage and a dozen-odd mules all become a part of the story of how and why the fight had to happen, and Russell catalogs them all with power and beauty and a calculating eye until, as a reader, you feel the weight and pressure of events and see the inevitability of the coming battle - the way that it couldn't not happen - and 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

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

"An epic retelling of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral that sets the 30-second battle within the broader context of the times." - Washington Post, Notable fiction books of 2015

"Russell breathes new life into the well-worn western saga of the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday's infamous shoot-out in the Arizona Territory town of Tombstone... a raucously Hogarthian depiction of how the West was truly lived." - Publishers Weekly

"With vast amounts of research and a poetic prose line ... Russell has crafted an epic tale ... a stunning performance." - Washington Post

"Mary Doria Russell has lifted the participants in the frontier's most famous gunfight out of the realm of genre fiction and catapulted them into the realm of literature." - Dallas Morning News

"Russell shows how the gunfight at the OK Corral is not the end of a hero's tale but just 30 terrible seconds in a decades-long, nationwide struggle to evolve out of ignorance into enlightenment." - Library Journal (starred review)

"Epitaph peels back all the layers of the events leading up to and following America's 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

"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

"Well-written and provocative, Doc is a book that will haunt you." - Historical Novels Review

Despite all that has been written and filmed about Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, Russell's pointedly anti-epic anti-romance is so epic and romantic that it whets the reader's appetite for more." - Kirkus Reviews