Lady at the O.K. Corral - The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp

The author of the acclaimed Salas Gift delivers the definitive biography of Josephine Marcus Earp, a Jewish woman from New York who became the common-law wife of famed lawman and gambler Wyatt Earp.For nearly fifty years, she lived with the most famous lawman of the Old West. Yet Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp has nearly been erased from Western lore. In this fascinating biography, Ann Kirschner brings Josephine out of the shadows of history to tell her full storya spirited and colorful tale of ambition, adventure, selfinvention, and romance reflective of America itself, from the postCivil War years to World War II.How did this aspiring actress and dancera flamboyant, curvaceous Jewish girl with a persistent New York accentland in Tombstone, Arizona, and steal the heart of Wyatt Earp? What inspired five decades of adventure-seeking that led from the Arizona Territory to Alaska to Hollywood? And what sustained her lifelong partnership with a man of uncommon charisma and complex heroism?Answering these questions, Kirschner offers a rare look at a womans life on the frontier and sheds new light on the iconic gunfight that made Wyatt Earp a legend, revealing Josephines place at its center. Lady at the O.K. Corral introduces a vivacious woman with a magnetic personality who was equally at home in the deserts of the American Southwest and the boomtowns of the Alaskan Gold Rush, in the opulent hotels of San Diego and San Francisco in the Gay Nineties, in rough mining camps, gaudy gambling casinos, racetracks, and boxing arenas, as on Hollywood back lots visiting Cecil B. DeMille and Samuel Goldwyn.Spanning more than half a century, this engaging narrative biography brings Josephine to the forefront of her own story and offers a fresh look at a remarkable era in American history.