TOMBSTONE

 

TOMBSTONE

By Tom Clavin

St. Martin’s Press

365 pgs

 

When look back in history on powerful empires, we soon learn that all the great ones had rich folktales and myths. The Greeks had the Aeneid and the Odyssey, while the Brits had the Legend of King Arthur. In America, the closest thing to such was the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, AZ. The good guys were the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday and the bad guys were the cattle rustling Clantons and McLaurys. This one particular moment of violent lasted all of 33 seconds but its effect on the image and culture of the American character is still being felt today. 

Western historian Tom Clavin echoes those statements in his own preface and mentions all the dozens of movies made on the subject, never mind the countless books. While aware he is going to be treading over lots of well known locales, the wonder of this book is how he focuses on the details and minutiae. He doesn’t drop us into that dusty Arizona mining town right before the the bullets started flying. No, like all good historians, Clavin takes us back to the beginning. The founding of the town as nothing by a silver mining camp. He digs into the past of all the wild and colorful souls whose fates all intertwined that year in the Fall of 1886. 

Here are Johnny Ringo, Curly Bill Brosious, Mayor Clum, Sheriff Behan and so many others, richly defined so that as one reads along, with each new chapter taking us closer and closer to that violent confrontation, one can almost smell the dust and fear that gripped that small little community when the forces of civilization finally smashed into the last gasp of the wild outlaw gangs known ast the Cowboys.

“Tombstone” is a winner on all fronts and highly recommented.

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