Five Star First Edition Westerns - Tombstone Travesty: Allie Earp Remembers [Hardcover]

Jane Candia Coleman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2, 2004 | ISBN-10: 1594140111 | ISBN-13: 978-1594140112 | Edition: 1

Here is a magnificent human drama based on the memories of one who lived it, filled with facts history books omitted. Orphaned at an early age, Allie and her brothers and sisters were parceled out to foster families. She eventually moved in with her married sister, who was operating a boarding house. It was there that Allie met Virgil Earp who was working for a stage line. They were married without benefit of clergy and so began a life of itinerant wandering where all roads seeming to lead to Tombstone. In this vivid account, all the political intrigue and moral ambiguities of that time and place are brought dramatically to life, including the stark and brutal events of lawlessness and law enforcement that culminated at the OK Corral.

Jane Candia Coleman lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Five Star; 1 edition (December 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594140111
• ISBN-13: 978-1594140112
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,369,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CORRECTING THE ORIGINAL TRAVESTY, December 31, 2004

By 

Socialcomment "LQCLamar" (Western U. S.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Five Star First Edition Westerns - Tombstone Travesty: Allie Earp Remembers (Hardcover)

Jane Coleman's portraits of the Earps abd the Earp women are little short of amazing as are her portrayals of Western women in her other books. In TOMBSTONE TRAVESTY, Allie Earp, brother Virgil Earp's wife finally has 'her' say, and it's about time. This is historical fiction, but it is close to autobiography.

Using Allie's 'bonafide' memoir, given to Earp family friend Glenn Boyer by LaVonne Griffin, Allie's grand niece to whom she dictated it, Coleman and Allie tell it like it was, not as Frank Waters fabricated it for his own dark purposes in THE EARP BROTHERS OF TOMBSTONE. When Waters read Allie his proposed manuscript for that book, and one wonders why he did, she threatened to kill him if he ever published. He didn't let a smidgeon of it out until she was at death's door. He knew that even in her nineties, Allie was capable of loading him with buckshot.

Coleman brings Allie to life here as she has so many frontier women, such as Doc Holliday's mistress, Big Nose Kate, in DOC HOLLIDAY'S WOMAN, and the unique stagcoach holdup woman, Pearl Hart, in I, PEARL HART, and Augusta Tabor, wife of silver king H.A.W. Tabor, in MATCHLESS.

A remarkable journey into the past, brought to you with such realism you are there.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SHINING A NEW LIGHT ON THE SUBJECT, January 25, 2005

By 

Joe Roman (New England) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Five Star First Edition Westerns - Tombstone Travesty: Allie Earp Remembers (Hardcover)

So much has been written about the Earps and especially their Tombstone years, that it is hard to imagine that much more can be said, but this book does indeed give us a different perspective about the people and the time that have come down to us from legend and from Hollywood.

Aunt Allie was a real survivor and a tough little woman. Even though she was tiny in stature, she was large in her uniqueness. Her character and especially her love and loyalty to her husband Virgil Earp, are in themselves the central theme of the story. Jane Coleman has given us yet another narrative that not only makes for enjoyable reading but is also sprinkled with nuggets of gold of information that has previously not been published elsewhere. Every Earp buff and student of the period should have this gem in his or her library.

Once again, the record has been set straight by the story of this remarkable woman and by the talent and skill of the author in giving us a historical novel to enjoy.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh Air for Tombstone!, June 6, 2005

By 

Steve From Arizona - See all my reviews

This review is from: Five Star First Edition Westerns - Tombstone Travesty: Allie Earp Remembers (Hardcover)

Jane Candia Coleman has managed to carve a literary niche for herself that seems to be hers alone: the retelling and recasting of southwestern history as seen through the eyes of the women who lived it, not the men. In this case, she breathes new life into the story of the feud in Tombstone, AZ involving the Earps and the Clantons in the 1880's. She focuses on the life of Allie Earp, wife of Virgil Earp, Wyatt's brother. With so much written and filmed about this feud from the male point of view, it's damn well time we experienced this genuinely dramatic story from the woman's perspective. Coleman informs us in an afterword that she had access to Allie Earp's memoirs, which are brought to life with the sharp eye and command of craft of a supremely skilled novelist. Coleman evokes these people and their world with a crisp, vivid style that kept me engaged throughout. But don't get the idea that this is a traditional shoot 'em up western. The author is up to far more than that. This is no less than a vivid depiction of a woman's life on the western frontier from her youth to her later years. It's a breath of fresh air that took my breath away! Highly recommended.