David Crockett: The Lion of the West
by Michael Wallis
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Despite the song’s assertion, Davy Crockett most likely didn’t “kill him a b’ar when he was only 3,” said Allen Barra in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger. Michael Wallis’s “splendid biography” gets to the bottom of this and other Crockett myths. We learn that the tracker and marksman had “never heard of the Alamo” before landing in the middle of Texas’s fight for liberty. We also learn that his bravery during that battle earned him his distinction as a true American folk hero.
The Last Gunfight
by Jeff Guinn
(Simon & Schuster, $27)
Jeff Guinn’s riveting account of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral “creates a canvas of the Old West that Frederic Remington would envy,” said Punch Shaw in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. According to Guinn, the legendary gun battle outside Tombstone, Ariz., didn’t even happen in a corral, but in a vacant lot. No matter: Guinn’s evocative portraits of the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday and his retelling of the “shocking” events that took place before and after the battle keep the pages turning.
Doc: A Novel
by Mary Doria Russell
(Random House, $26)
Mary Doria Russell’s “fantastic new novel” recasts the Doc Holliday of legend as a “rough mixture of fury, gentility, and bourbon,” said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. Diagnosed with tuberculosis in his 20s, John Henry Holliday spent his short adulthood mixing a commitment to dentistry with a talent for card playing. Throughout the book, Russell “dismantles rickety legends while reconstructing her own larger-than-life characters on a firmer foundation of psychological insight.”
The Sisters Brothers
by Patrick deWitt
(Ecco, $25)
“If Cormac McCarthy had a sense of humor, he might have concocted a story like Patrick deWitt’s bloody, darkly funny Western,” said Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times. DeWitt’s tale centers on the misadventures of Oregon gunslingers Eli and Charlie Sisters, who are hired to kill a California prospector. Narrated by Eli, the story is carried along by the brothers’ quirky encounters—with dead Indians, a possible witch, and a dentist who introduces Eli to the art of brushing one’s teeth.
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feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”