Doc

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.

March 1, 2011

Doc Holliday is the tragic hero in this terrific bio-epic set in a revisionist version of the Old West—more realistic yet more riveting than any movie or TV western.

Born with a cleft palate in 1851, John Henry Holliday grows up in Georgia devoted to his tubercular mother who fosters his love of literature and music before her early death. A promising dental career in Atlanta ends when he is diagnosed with tuberculosis at age 22, and he heads west for his health. By 1878, when Doc turns up in Dodge City with his mistress Kate, professional gambling has eclipsed his dental career. He has also been accused and acquitted of murder, but according to Russell (Dreamers of the Day, 2008, etc.), he is neither a hardened gunfighter nor a pathetic dipsomaniac. Soon he sets up a dental practice and befriends Morgan Earp, the most intellectual Earp brother. Fact and mythmaking converge as Russell creates a Dodge City filled with nuggets of surprising history, a city so alive readers can smell the sawdust and hear the tinkling of saloon pianos. Losing their mythic, heroic sheen, figures like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson become more captivating for their complexity. Doc's new friends are in their 20s (years before the O.K. Corral brings Doc and the Earps fame), still defining themselves and their ambitions, while their girlfriends are prostitutes without hearts of gold, only depressing pasts and often-hopeless futures. Doc observes the feuds and changing Dodge City politics from his vantage point, treating teeth and dealing Faro. Meanwhile, he drinks to medicate against his physical pain and gambles because the dentistry he loves won't pay his bills. He and Kate, his intellectual equal, whose life began as the highly educated daughter of a Hungarian doctor before her family's ruin, share an increasingly tumultuous relationship, torn apart by her neediness and the inevitability of his deteriorating health. Their creed, heartbreaking and brave, becomes "Without hope, without fear."

Filled with action and humor yet philosophically rich and deeply moving—a magnificent read.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 1, 2011

The author of such acclaimed speculative fiction as The Sparrow moves into the historical fiction arena with this novel about the Wild West. The titular protagonist is Doc Holliday, a participant in the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral, but Russell does not focus on this infamous event that defined Holliday's life in the eyes of the public. The story starts with Holliday's birth and his relationship with his mother, whom he idolized. She later dies of consumption, the disease that will kill Holliday. Holliday trains to be a dental surgeon, but illness prevents him from practicing. He then moves west to Dodge City to prevent his illness from progressing. This is the fateful move that brings him together with Wyatt Earp and his sometimes female companion and prostitute Maria Katarina Harony. VERDICT Full of well-developed characters and rich historical detail, Russell's excellent novel will appeal to readers who enjoy a lively and vivid work of historical fiction or to Western buffs curious about this notorious character. [Library marketing; see Prepub Alert, 11/22/10.]--Kristen Stewart, Brazoria Cty. Lib. Syst., Pearland Lib., TX

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2011
Russell creatively reimagines Doc Hollidays early years in this authentically detailed, evocatively rendered fictional biography. Beginning long before the ill-fated shootout at the O. K. Corral, she paints a portrait of the tubercular young Doc, heading west for his health. Thoughtful, well-educated, and genteel, the young would-be dentist joins forces with the love of his life, Mria Katarina Harony, a Hungarian prostitute with a razor-sharp intellect and her own interesting backstory. As dentistry takes a back seat to gambling, and the action moves to Dodge City, Doc also befriends Morgan Earp, and a host of familiar real-life figures are introduced. What elevates the novel above standard western mythologies lies in its crystalline characterizations, crackling dialogue, and vivid, less than idyllic descriptions of the time and the place. This robust realization of the man before he was replaced by the legend is not for genre fans only.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)