Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend

I'm very pleased to meet this side of the mytological character of Wild West. 48 years ago, when I was about ten, I heard or read the first time about "the Lion of Tombstone", from the pulp magazine named Jesse James. After that I have collided to this persona mostly in film, played by Henry Fonda (My Darling Clementine), Burt Lancaster (Gunfight at OK Corral), James Garner (Hour of the Gun), Kurt Russell (Tombstone) and Kevin Costner (Wyatt Earp) among many other, probably secondary, films. I have read a lot about him, too, never very sure of if he was good (or very good) or a bad person, and what he really did in Wichita, Dodge City, Tombstone and other places. This fine book brings him alive without giving any easy black-and-white answers. The first half of this book is very exciting when it tells about the real west, and the other half is absolutely heartbreaking, when it tells about the last decades of an old-growing hero who didn't know his place any more: the one who the most of his life wanted to became wealthy and live in peace, and what of his life became -- endless quarrel and fight and the absolute poverty. When I was young, I admired this man Earp. After I had red Helldorado by William Breakenridge and Triggernometry by Eugene Cunningham I kind of despised Wyatt and his brothers and hated Doc Holliday, but then I luckily got to read this book of Tefertillers (which is as good as any biography of Kafka or T. S. Eliot) and now the doors are open again. Still I don't know where the truth lies, but for sure I know that Wyatt Earp has lived the most interesting (and very hard indeed) life, and that in life line between right and wrong is very difficult to detect and that the life in little mining camps of wild west was not simplier but rather even more complicated that average life nowadays. I think Wyatt Earp has been quite like Michael Koolhaas in the novel by Heinrich von Kleist. And his mind was quite as unexplored as than Hamlets. That's the base where to big story begins from (being a writer myself I think, I could make a play or novel out of his story some day). And Wyatts last words "Suppose. Suppose" just brought the tears in my eyes, compared to our (Finnish) national writers, Aleksis Kivi's, last words in mental hospital: "I live." Wyatt Earp by Casey Tefertiller is the best book I have read this year. Can I say more?

By writing this book, Casey Tefertiller has done a great service to Western historians and to the intelligent reading public in general by clarifying and substantiating Wyatt Earp's true legacy as a frontier lawman. He accomplishes this by tracing often conflicting information back to its primary source and by distilling this information into a complete, comprehensive, and factual work which, when critically analyzed, invalidates over a century's worth of misinformation and falsehoods all of which appear to stem from a single source. That source by all accounts was a corrupt sheriff, Johnny Behan, and his appointed deputy who at the same time served as the editor of Tombstone's "Nugget," the newspaper which devoted much of its space to vilifying and slandering the Earp brothers and Wyatt Earp's friend, Doc Holliday. The falsehoods which graced, or disgraced, the Nugget's pages were obviously intended to shift the blame for Cochise County's lawlessness from the "cow-boy" outlaws who were primarily responsible for voting the sheriff into office and from the sheriff's obvious complicity onto the Earp brothers and Holliday. The Nugget's constant drumbeat eventually spread confusion in Tombstone tarnishing the Earp brothers' reputation and causing them to lose popular support. This allowed the lawlessness to continue to the benefit of both the sheriff and his outlaw friends. To make matters worse, the fictions created by the Nugget would be spread nation-wide; seemingly with no one ever bothering to check the facts, until eventually they would be accepted as gospel. As Adolph Hitler would demonstrate many years later, lies when repeated often enough are eventually accepted as the truth. As a result of Tefertiller's work, however, we can now begin to understand why the Earp brothers had such a difficult time in enforcing the law in Tombstone and why America's premier lawman was so maligned in his own lifetime and is so controversial even to this very day. After reading this book, it somehow all makes sense. Perhaps someday someone will be able to research and write a better more definitive biography of Wyatt Earp, but it seems highly unlikely. Bottom line: This is a great read but not a thriller since it meticulously tells the story of Wyatt Earp, warts and all, without embellishment. If you like history and the old west, go for it. What the heck. Go for it anyway.

With this book, Casey Tefertiller has moved the field of Wyatt Earp history into a new era characterized by scrupulous research and rigorous handling of source material. For more than a score of years, a charismatic, iconic figure has enthralled Earp afficionados with tantalizing secret manuscripts and mysterious sources. The iconoclastic Mr. Terfertiller has eschewed the use of this phoney-baloney, novelistic history and has attempted to expunge all traces of it from his book. "Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend" is a meticulously documented book and by far the most important biography written on the life of Wyatt Earp to date.Mr. Tefertiller provides a cursory overview of Earp's pre-Tombstone life in Chapter One (31 pages). Three supposed errors appear on the first page:1. "the family... headed for California in 1863." The year "1863" is a typographical error as revealed by endnote [1] where Mr. Tefertiller correctly notes that the Earp party traveled in a train of forty wagons to San Bernardino in "1864."2. "Two years later the Earps moved again, landing in Pella, Iowa, where Wyatt's younger brothers, Morgan and Warren, were born." This statement is correct, as written. Mr. Tefertiller only identifies the "male" members of the Nicholas Earp family by name (Newton, James, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan and Warren). The four female members of the family (Mariah, Martha, Virginia, and Adelia) are not specifically identified. Three of the girls died young, and Adelia married early. Adelia never lived in Tombstone and played no important role in the saga of Wyatt Earp's adult life.3. "The growing family remained settled [in Pella] until the Civil War broke out." Mr. Tefertiller covers ten years of the Nicholas Earp family life with this brief sentence. In fact, the family moved to Monmouth, Illinois and returned to Pella. In 1852, Nicholas Earp traveled to California and left his family behind in the care of relatives. Mr. Tefertiller's book contains 402 pages with small type and narrow margins and crams a vast amount of Earp material between it's covers. Obviously a more complete treatment of Wyatt's early life was sacrificed to provide a more detailed account of Wyatt's adult years; the years of which, most Earp afficionados have the greatest interest. "Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend" presents a balanced account of the complex life of Wyatt Earp. This book is a must read for all students of Western history.

Casey Tefertiller has written a very well researched, totally fair, and engrossing book about the most famous person of the old west. He approaches Earp's life with an open mind and captures the essence of the man without nominating him for sainthood or branding him as the next satan.He provides the detail from Earp's early years which help shape his adult personality and actions in Dodge City and Tombstone. He does not attempt to hide the seedy side of Earp's life during those years or the fact that Earp was not above using people or events to advance his cause or personal gain.The most important part of the book is the detailed discussion that explains the reasons for the gunfight with the Clantons and his revenge against the cowboys,for the murder of his brother, that showed Earp to be more ruthless than any outlaw of his time.It has always amazed me that movie makers during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, dreamed up total fiction about Earp instead of using the truth. I have to credit the makers of "Wyatt Earp" and "Tombstone" for correcting this error. Both movies capture the soul of Earp in different ways. If you are going to read one book about Wyatt Earp, this is the one to read because it is the best. If you want to read another, try "Inventing Wyatt Earp". It was written about the same time as this book and is very good.

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading "Life Behind the Legend" I am sometimes suspicious of historical books not penned by historians. But such fears are groundless in this instance. Tefertiller has done an exceptional job of ignoring the inaccurate work done by some in the field and has gone to the original sources for his information. Wyatt Earp is one of those American icons who draws writers like flies, and for most people, separating fact from fantasy is difficult when weighing through the dozens of tomes. Congratulations for Tefertiller for his tenacity and for giving us a revealing and fascinating look at this American icon.