Epitaph

Mary Doria Russell,the bestsellingaward-winning author of The Sparrowreturns with Epitaph. An American Iliadthis richly detailed and meticulously researched historical novel continues the story she began in Docfollowing Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday to TombstoneArizonaand 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 TombstoneArizona. It should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest. Thirty seconds and thirty bullets laterthree officers were wounded and three citizens lay dead in the dirt. Wyatt Earp was the last man standingthe only one unscathed. The lies began before the smoke clearedbut the gunfight at the O.K. Corral would soon become central to American beliefs about the Old West. Epitaph tells WyattΓÇÖs real storyunearthing the Homeric tragedy buried under 130 years of mythologymisrepresentationand sheer indifference to fact. Epic and intimatethis 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 Marcuswho 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.