T.F. Torrey's Review of Trouble In Tombstone by Richard S. Wheeler

I began reading Trouble In Tombstone expecting to be disappointed. I've never been a big fan of westerns, I've never been intrigued by the gunfight at the OK Corral, and I've never been starstruck by Wyatt Earp. The trouble I would find in Tombstone, I thought, would be finding the will to finish the book. Add that to the long list of things I've been wrong about.

Instead, I found myself mesmerized. Written as an autobiography of an aged Wyatt Earp, the story centers on his adventures in Tombstone and their immediate aftermath. The narrative begins soon after the arrival in Tombstone of the Earp clan and describes the interplay of forces that led to the famous gunfight, and just as importantly, to the vendetta afterward. As the Earps are drawn inexorably into the showdown with the Cowboys, the reader is drawn into the tale. The Earps are outnumbered, the police are corrupt, and the Cowboys have no qualms with shooting a man in the back.

Wheeler's prose brings alive the places and characters of the story. Intrigued, I found myself researching the life and times of Wyatt Earp and Tombstone, and to my delight I found that Wheeler's book is true to both, capturing them so accurately a reader might come away dusty and sunburned. In the end, the book is a story of love and loyalty, of faith and friendship, of corruption and redemption. Wheeler draws Wyatt Earp as a man who knows his own flaws and accepts them. These traits are as winsome today as they were in the old west, and perhaps that is why the book resonates so well across the decades. The trouble I found in Tombstone was putting the book down to get some sleep.

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