Tombstone : an Iliad of the Southwest
(Book)

"Published in cooperation with the University of New Mexico Center for the American West."

"Born in 1849, Earp grew up on the Missouri-Kansas frontier and first came to notice as a no-nonsense town marshal in rip-roaring Dodge City, Kansas. Moving to wide-open Tombstone, Arizona, in 1879, he became a businessman and deputy United States marshal and was soon joined by four brothers. In Burns's narrative, the Earp clan represents law and order in the lawless chaotic Old West. These antagonistic forces explode in the bloody and legendary gunfight at the OK Corral between the Earps and the Clanton-McLowery gang. The Earps prevailed, but the subsequent shootings of two Earp brothers drove the calm, courageous, and somewhat emotionless Wyatt to take the law into his own hands. In a personal vendetta, he hunted and killed the treacherous "assassins." Wyatt Earp's most recent biographer, Casey Tefertiller, discusses the influence of Tombstone on the history and legend of Wyatt Earp and the Old West."--Jacket.