Ann Kirschner

The biggest barrier to writing about any famous or semi-famous person from the old west is the lack of information on the background of the person or even reliable information beyond the sensationalistic current day accounts of their exploits. Even newspapers at the time were sensationalistic and relied as much on hearsay or political leanings as they did accurate reporting.

Enter Wyatt Earp's common law wife Josephine Marcus Earp. Not only has very little been known about her, she is greatly overshadowed by her more famous "husband."

It is clear that Josephine was a rebellious party girl who ran into the eventual enemy of Wyatt Johnny Behan, Sherriff of Cochise County. Johnny Behan lured Josephine to Tombstone where, to make a long story short, she met Wyatt Earp who she left Behan for. Of course she had a lot of reason to leave Behan who was consorting with other women and had essentially not married her and left her to care for his house and son he was raising. Thus not only were Wyatt Earp and Johnny Behan political enemies, they were personal enemies over Josephine.

Have you ever heard of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral? Well, that was the apex of Wyatt's time in Tombstone, Arizona with Josephine right in the middle.

But that was just the beginning of this relationship. While Wyatt sent his other common law wife Mattie Blaylock home to his parents, where she eventually committed suicide, Wyatt picked Josephine up in California and were together for the 50 years.

Regardless of what one wants to say about the sordid nature of their relationship and Wyatt abandoning his common law wife, the fact they were together for the rest of their lives speaks volumes about their love for one another.

The story told here talks a great deal about Josephine trying to cover up the fact she was lured to Tombstone and cover up the eventual fate and suicide of Mattie Blaylock. But after Tombstone she and Wyatt lived a vagabond life, moving to various locales to try to scrape out a living, even including Nome, Alaska where they spent a few years.

After Wyatt's death much of Josephine's effort were around trying to preserve the image of Wyatt and make money with stories and movies off his death. In some ways it seemed like a sad life as she was trying to build up Wyatt's reputation but also wanted to cash on her long-term relationship with him and legal rights as common law wife.

Overall, I have to give this effort a very positive review because the author really brings Josephine to life and tells an honest, clear story about her.… (meer)

A fun and interesting story about a fun and interesting person. This book is an excellent disclosure about celebrity, media,history and the transition of America into the current era (from which we are digitally passing now). The author is clear, concise and the prose flows with grace. Very glad I read it. Having been a student of history Ithis book impressed me more than ever that no historian can nail it all down. Humanity is too gray to be preserved in black ink on white paper, or as in this Kindle version, the digital equivalent. For this lesson I highly recommend this tome. As a fourth generation native Arzonan, with a history of playground memories of Earp and Tombstone and The Bucket of Blood Saloon in Northern Arizona Holbrook, every page was fun!… (meer)