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Title: The Earp Brothers of Tombstone by Frank Waters ISBN: 0-8032-5838-0 Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr Pub. Date: June, 1976 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.75 (8 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: A PACK OF LIES, BASED ON IRREFUTABLE AUTHORITY
Comment: Since I am one of the last living people who can comment on the genesis of this book with authority, and since I am heartily tired of uninformed reviewers extolling its virtues - especially since there is ample opportunity to know different - I am conferring this belated Christmas present on the reading public. It was sixty years ago yesterday when I first met the subject of this book.
For years I was a member by ties of love of the family of Wyatt Earp's niece, Estelle Edwards Miller. Her mother, Adelia Earp, was the only sister of the Earp Boys' who lived to maturity. The subject of this book by Waters, known as "Aunt Allie," was the wife of Adelia's and Wyatt's brother, Virgil. She was greatly loved by her Earp relatives, especially by Estelle and Bill Miller. She and Virgil tried to adopt Estelle, since they had no children of their own, and didn't seem able to have any. Adelia, as Estelle said, responded to that by saying, "Lord knows I've got enough kids, but none to spare."
"Aunt Allie" was a dead-honest original, and didn't deserve to have Frank Waters misuse the authority of her name to vomit on an unsuspecting public this duplicitous melange of lies about her life, especially that part lived with the Earps.
The Millers over the next few years until Aunt Allie's death made it possible for me to meet her on other occasions. They also arranged for me to meet Wyatt's widow before her death. I am sorry to say that a green farm kid in his teens and early twenties, didn't elicit any deathless revelations from either Aunt Allie, or Aunt Sadie, as the Earp family called Wyatt's widow.
As a consequence of meeting Allie, and of the fact that the Earp side of the family, particularly the Millers, probably tried to draw her out for my benefit, I heard her personally denounce this book in her own inimitable profane manner, with the words: "I told that little bleep, Frank Waters, if he ever published any of that b.s. he 'made up' about the Earps Boys, I'd kill him." Of course the reader has only my word for this, but I have, and am willing to show to 'selected' scholars, Hildreth Halliwell's letters confirming this, although her Victorian delicacy modified Allie a little, and Hildreth says Allie only threatened to "sue" Waters. As Hildreth went on to say, "I get so mad every time I think of what Frank Waters wrote after spending hours with Aunt Allie I go berserk . . . he published a lot of lies . . . "
I make that clear in my Epilogue to I MARRIED WYATT EARP and did on two other occasions while Waters was still alive, thus giving him an opportunity to sue me for libel if he chose. Naturally he didn't.
Before Frank realized what I knew for sure, I visited him when he was writer-in-residence at Colorado State U. at Ft. Collins, in 1966, ten years before my I MARRIED WYATT EARP was published. I asked him what Aunt Allie had said about his book. He said, "She said it was the truth." I have extensive notes from that meeting as well, but unfortunately someone relived me of the audiotape, as light-fingered collectors have of so many things during my 'generous-damn-fool' years. I do have many of Waters' letters and his hypocritical inscription in his book, "hoping I will carry on the good work."
This book certainly is a "travesty" as Bruce Trinque comments in an adjoining review, and it is far worse than that. Of course Bruce is referring to Frank Waters' initial title, TOMBSTONE TRAVESTY. Travesty is mild, however, this book is an outrage. It is my opinion that principle requires that it no longer be published, and I don't understand why the University of Nebraska Press continues to do so in view of the recent outcry made by several such as Trinque. I am amazed that "all of a sudden" so many have spoken who seem to have missed my widely disseminated complaints about it made as early as 1976, with proof of what I said.
Someone is sure to comment on similar attacks on my book I MARRIED WAYTT EARP, alleging that over the years I "admitted" or "confessed" something or other horrible that discredits the book. (See Publisher's Note in review on Amazon.com regarding this.)
As an interesting sidelight, due to my Earp family connection, I own the bonafide memoirs of "Aunt Allie" Earp, done in indignant reaction to Waters' book, with LaVonne Miller Griffin as her amanuensis. LaVonne, of course, was Estelle and Bill Miller's daughter, and my dear friend. She gave me the work before she died and allowed me to copy it even before then. It will be the basis of a forthcoming historical novel titled "Aunt Allie Remembers" by my wife, Jane Candia Coleman Boyer, prize winning poet and novelist and is already contracted for by FIVE STAR WESTERNS.
In sum, Waters' book is garbage, although many passages are pure gold. Which ones will be revealed in the above novel.
Finally, again for the record, light-fingered associates and venomous critics have only succeeded in killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. It is with reluctance that I reveal even this much beyond my copious publications but I guess it is owed to the public at large. Looking back, I regret having published anything about the Earps, or even having let anyone know I knew them. As his niece by marriage Peggy Greenburg once said to me: "Everyone is trying to get into the act. There is no act anymore. The poor man is dead. Why don't they let him alone?" Sadly, the answer is: Because - I regret to say - my publications refurbished his reputation (due to tactful omissions in some cases) and struck into being a weird bunch of Earp "groupies."
Rating: 1
Summary: Libelous at best or worst
Comment: The author must have had a no-so-hidden agenda to debunk the man and the myth of Wyatt Earp. I have read a number of books on the Earp brothers, especially the Tombstone days. I have also read the transcript or at least what is reported to be the transcript of Judge Spicer's ruling on the murder charges brought against the Earps as a result of THE gunfight. The author in my opinion has badly and intentionally distorted the facts. I threw away my copy of this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: A counterpoise
Comment: This book is an excellent counterpoise to the silly, inaccurate and self-serving blather which usually passes for a biography of Earp's life. While it has problems, here and there, it is, by orders of magnitude, more accurate than books which claim Earp was a lawman, primarily, or cleaned up any western town, of which several more have been published in the last few years.
Read it, look up the very accurate records kept by the justice department regarding who was a Deputy US Marshal (including special deputies, commissioned for one purpose or another), and who was not, and decide for yourself which story is correct: the intrepid lawman, or the pimp who abandoned his common-law wife; the wealthy gambler and real estate magnate, or the lazy ne'er do well who ran out on a ...mortgage; the unfailing courageous battler for law and order, or the braggart who had his face slapped and gun taken by a real US Marshall in Alaska.
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Title: Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait by Karen Holliday Tanner, Robert K. Dearment ISBN: 0806133201 Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: March, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Wyatt Earp : The Life Behind the Legend by Casey Tefertiller ISBN: 0471283622 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 25 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: I Married Wyatt Earp: The Recollections of Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp by Glenn G. Boyer ISBN: 0816505837 Publisher: Historical Research Associates Pub. Date: August, 1976 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Tombstone's Epitaph by Douglas D. Martin ISBN: 0806129824 Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Truth About Wyatt Earp : by Richard E. Erwin ISBN: 0595001270 Publisher: Author's Choice Press Pub. Date: 22 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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