Doc

Focusing on the man he was and not on the legend he became, Russell's novel masterfully imagines John Henry "Doc" Holliday's everyday life. With a growly Southern drawl straight out of central casting, narrator Mark Bramhall saunters through the narration as confidently as Doc once strolled the dusty streets of nineteenth-century Kansas. Utilizing diverse drawls to differentiate infamous gunslingers--including Doc, Bat Masterson, and the Earp brothers--Bramhall also fluently transitions into international accents that reflect the ever-expanding influx of immigrants at the time from China and Europe. Bramhall's soulful performance will resonate with listeners, who will hear John Henry's passion for dentistry and love for his common-law wife, a prostitute, as well as his acceptance of his own fate in the face of death. A.R.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

March 21, 2011
Russell (Dreamers of the Day) brings lethal Dodge City to life in a colorful group-portrait of famous frontiersmen years before many of them would pass into legend at the O.K. Corral. After a tense childhood in Civil Warâtorn Georgia and the loss of his beloved mother, young John Henry "Doc" Holliday moves west in hopes of ameliorating the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him, relocating in the late 1870s to Kansas, where he divides his time among his poorly paying vocation of dentistry, lucrative gambling, and his fractious relationship with Kate Harony, a cultured, Hungarian-born prostitute. In a tale notable more for a remarkable cast than orderliness of plot, the rising tension between the corrupt, carousing, and well-armed inhabitants of Dodge and the forces of law represented by the moralistic Wyatt Earp and his brother, Morgan, makes a spectacular background to a memorable year-in-the-life tale of a fiery young Southern gentleman whose loyalty to his friends and love of music outshine even his fragile health and the whiskey-soaked violence of the western frontier.