Tombstone Travesty: Allie Earp Remembers: A Western Story

by Jane Candia Coleman

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594140111
• ISBN13: 9781594140112
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Five Star (ME)
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful!

Jane Candia Coleman, in her heavily researched Tombstone Travesty: The Memoirs of Allie Earp, has finally set the record straight about this side of the Earp family. Like her stunning Doc Holliday's Woman, Coleman had access to numerous records direct from family sources. For many years the media had canonized the Earp family, particularly Wyatt Earp. Then along came a writer who, having access to the still living Allie Earp, set out to debunk the family, making himself the "revisionist historian" who could "tell it all." Worthy of note is that he did not publish it until after her death, when no family member could come to her defense. Now, Coleman has risen to that defense in this highly readable and enjoyable work. I strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading about the Earp family, the western experience and its tough and resourceful frontier women.

Fresh Air for Tombstone!

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.

"Another Amazing Effort!!!"

Jane Candia Coleman has once again put forth an amazing work of literature! As with all of her previous novels (Desperate Acts, Doc Holliday's Woman, Doc Holliday's Gone, etc...) she paints as powerful a picture as any author around. Her story based on Allie Earp's REAL memoirs is without a doubt a breath of fresh air that has been needed for a long time. Now everyone should be able to completely forget the real "Tombstone Travesty" which was Frank Waters' original work supposedly on this same topic! Congratulations, Jane!

SHINING A NEW LIGHT ON THE SUBJECT

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.

CORRECTING THE ORIGINAL TRAVESTY

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.