“Brothers of the Gun,” by Mark Lee Gardner (Dutton)
“Icons never die,” writes Colorado author Mark Lee Gardner in the preface to “Brothers of the Gun.” Thatap why the story of Wyatt Earp, “one-time pimp and horse thief,” and Doc Holliday, “a boozing, gun-toting gambling addict,” have been the subjects of countless books, movies, documentaries and novels.
“Brothers of the Gun” explores the extraordinary friendship between the men. “Doc’s whole heart and soul was wrapped up in Wyatt Earp,” lawman and later newspaperman Bat Masterson wrote. For Wyatt, Doc was “like having another sibling,” Gardner writes. Whenever one man was in trouble, the other came to his assistance. Nonetheless, the two men would take a bullet for each other. That was never more true than in the shootout at the O.K. Corral.
Gardner goes into detail about the lead-up to the well-known confrontation, but he doesn’t neglect the aftermath. The fight between the Cowboys, as the band of robbers and cattle thieves was known, and the Earp Brothers and Doc took only 30 seconds. The aftermath lasted years, as one side sought to murder the other. Both were successful, to a degree.
The author has done extensive research, painting a picture of Tombstone in its heyday, with its saloons, prostitution and gunfights. (One man was killed in an argument over his checkered shirt.) But early chroniclers of the famous fight often made up their accounts. Two would-be biographers had access to Earp himself. (He didn’t die until 1929, nearly 50 years after the 1881 shootout. Doc died much earlier, in a Glenwood Springs hotel.) But neither managed to write an acceptable work, and so squandered much of the information that came from Earp. It’s a shame that Gardner, with his eye for detail, couldn’t have sat down with the famous old lawman.
“Finding Amal,” by Firyal Alshalabi (Great Writers Press)
Hadeel is a wealthy Kuwaiti girl, religious and obedient, except that she doesn’t want an arranged marriage with a cousin. In fact, she’s secretly in love with a professor, who has asked her to marry him. But she won’t marry without her devout father’s permission, which he’s unlikely to give. When the father’s sister Amal dies, another sister secretly sends Hadeel to Boulder to bring the body back to Kuwait for a proper religious burial.
Hadeel is stunned by the freedom in Colorado. She wants only to return home before her parents discover she’s away, until she runs into Amina, an old friend from home. Amina and Amal’s bereaved husband introduce her to American life. As she melds the values of her new world and old, Hadeel finds herself questioning many of her beliefs.
Although Hadeel was only 5 when Amal left, she learns her aunt never forgot her and wrote dozens of letters that never reached her. The two shared a love of Washington Irving and Percy Bysshe Shelley as well as a work called “Thalaba the Destroyer.” The lengthy literary references are a bit off-putting in an otherwise poignant story of secrets and growth by a first-time novelist. Still, “Finding Amal” is a valuable look into the life of a contemporary Islamic woman.
“We Bring You An Hour Of Darkness,” by Michael Bourne (DoppleHouse Press)
Bourner, a former reporter at the Aspen Times, uses the 1998 eco-terrorism fire in Vail as inspiration for “An Hour of Darkness,” a novel set in a fictionalized 1993 Colorado mountain town. The story is about a ski area that wants to expand and the locals who are fighting change.
Tish Threadgill is the editor of a failing newspaper in Franklin, when an eco-terrorist sets fire to a power substation, plunging Franklin into “an hour of darkness.” Itap the first in a series of bombings and threats aimed at preventing the ski area from expanding. The developers, mired in corruption and conspiracy, plunge ahead, of course. The only thing that can stop them is the possibility that the proposed expansion is in a wildlife preserve for lynx. But are lynx actually there?
While Trish fights the ski company, tries to keep the paper afloat and engages in a tryst with one of her creditors, she also deals with staff issues. Gemma, a wealthy young intern, is eager to uncover corruption in the ski company, but she has her own agenda.
Good guys always win in books like this, so you will soon figure out the outcome. “We Bring You An Hour of Darkness” has its rough spots, but still, itap fun to cheer on the locals back when we actually believed it was possible to stop development in our mountains.
“The American Revolution,” by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns (Knopf)
While the American Revolution took place in the East, it was critical to the idea of Manifest Destiny. The British had outlawed expansion beyond the Appalachians, and American soldiers demanded access to Indian lands. In fact, at one time any man who signed up for the Continental Army was promised land that rightfully belonged to Native Americans. Winning the war, then, led to settlement all the way to California.
“The American Revolution” is a massive book that accompanies the documentary. Itap a history of the revolution, but one that emphasizes the underside of the war, telling the importance of Indians, minorities and women. Like the documentary, the book is richly illustrated with maps, drawings and paintings. There are vignettes of little-known men and women who played a part in the war. This is a realistic view of what revolution meant to those often overlooked by history.
