Candi's Reviews > Doc

"To sell newspapers, the journalists of his day embellished slim fact with fat rumor and rank fiction; it was they who invented the iconic frontier gambler and gunman Doc Holliday. (Thin. Mustachioed. A cold and casual killer. Doomed, and always dressed in black, as though for his own funeral.)"

I have a lot of respect for an author that tries to set the facts straight, and that is exactly what Mary Doria Russell did here with this piece of interesting historical fiction. There are a myriad of wild stories and legends surrounding Dr. John Henry Holliday, otherwise known as Doc Holliday. According to Russell in the author’s note: "Arriving at the end of historical fiction today, the modern reader is likely to wonder, ‘How much of that was real?’ In this case, the answer is: not all of it but a lot more than you might think." This book briefly introduces us to Doc as a young boy, the educated son of an affluent Georgia planter who later studies dentistry, a ‘respectable profession for a gentleman.’ The main focus of this novel, however, is the time Doc spent in Dodge City, Kansas, the years prior to those legendary events in Tombstone, Arizona. We also meet the famed Earp brothers as well as Mária Katarina Harony, simply called Kate, or Big Nose Kate (behind her back, of course.) Raised in the imperial court of Mexico and well-versed in several languages, Kate was forced to flee to the United States for political reasons. Her life then turned in a downward spiral, forcing her into the one profession that allowed her to remain standing on her own two feet – prostitution. In Dodge City, Doc will set up a dentistry practice by day and play cards by night. Much of his drinking, I learned, was attributed to his tuberculosis. Bourbon was a means of quieting a cough and dulling the pain. There is also a mystery surrounding the death of a mixed race boy named Johnnie Sanders. This intrigued me, but unfortunately seemed to get lost in the many other threads within this book, resurfacing only on occasion as a reminder that the case was still not solved.

I am a huge fan of Mary Doria Russell – I adored her science fiction novels, The Sparrow and Children of God. As a result, I had very high expectations for this book. While I did come away from this one feeling like I had learned a lot more and cleared up many of my pre-conceived notions of Doc, I did not find myself fully engaged. Why that is, I am not completely sure… I’m just going to ramble a bit about that as I think and write. I certainly enjoy an excellent western from time to time – maybe I set the bar too high when I think of my all-time favorite, Lonesome Dove. I know it’s not fair to compare with THAT western, but I admit that I can’t get it out of my head when reading in this genre. There were a lot of characters in this book, and Russell does a very good job of developing them, but I didn’t necessarily care too deeply about any of them. Nor did I dislike any of them. In reading a western, I typically get wrapped up in the grand, sweeping landscapes. Not so here. I think perhaps I spent too long inside the saloons and gambling rooms this time around. I’m not much of a card player, gambling does not interest me; therefore I was a bit bored during what should have felt like the more tense and exciting poker and faro scenes. I wanted to ride horses, shoot guns, and have even more run-ins with the law! Okay, I admit the ending was rather exciting and did leave me satisfied!

I am definitely an outlier here. So, please read more reviews and decide for yourself if this is a book for you or not! Personally, this one gets 3.5 ‘interesting but not hugely compelling’ stars.