Forgotten Books: WYATT EARP'S TOMBSTONE VENDETTA by Glenn G. Boyer

Author Glenn Boyer (who headed for the last round-up in February) devoted about thirty years of his life to Earp scholarship, writing many magazine articles and four books on the subject. Boyer had a big leg up on other Earp scholars because he sought out and cultivated relatives, descendants and even friends of the people involved.

Wyatt Earp's Tombstone Vendetta (1993) was Boyer's last Earp book, and I found it both fascinating and frustrating.  In the foreword, he tells us that because most of his sources have passed on, he is at last free to tell the whole story, sharing the sum of his research, which he was not allowed to do when they were alive. Unfortunately, some of those folks prefered to remain anonymous, either in whole or in part, even after death.

Boyer's solution was to write what he termed a "nonfiction novel," purportedly based on the diary of a man he calls Ted Ten Eyck (admittedly a phony name), who was acquainted with most of the principle players (those being Wyatt and Josephine Earp, Doc Holliday, Johnny Behan, John Clum, Curly Bill Brocious and others) and privy to an astonishing amount of behind-the-scenes information. Then he murkied the waters even further, stating that "in a few instances" he merged what Ten Eyck wrote with what other sources related to Boyer on the same subject.

By the time I finished the book, I was convinced Ten Eyck was a wholly fictional character, a literary device allowing Boyer to present the results of his research in a continuous narrative. In that respect, it's an effective approach. The problem is that very little of Boyer's information can be verified, and has therefore been shunned by most serious historians.

Glenn Boyer in 2009

I can appreciate his dilemma. Boyer had gained the friendship and picked the brains of a great many well-meaning people, gathering a mountain of information. But in most cases those folks were sharing memories of stories they had heard in their youth or had been been passed down through the family. By the time this information reached Boyer, it was double or triple-hearsay. That doesn't mean the stuff wasn't true, but it could hardly be classified as historical record.

I have to give Boyer the benefit of the doubt. I think he was telling what he believed to be the true story of events surrounding Wyatt Earp and the dust-up near the OK Corral. To do that, he chose to process everything he had heard, combine it with his own knowledge and insight, add a few educated guesses, and present it all as fact. Much of the information in the book sounds like it came from family sources, but in a few instances I suspect Boyer was playing detective and offering his own solutions to historical mysteries. The hardest scenes to swallow involve Wyatt Earp telling Ten Eyck who shot first - and at whom - in the Tombstone gunfight, and Doc Holliday revealing the "true" story of the death of Johnny Ringo.

I'd like to believe this is the way it really happened, but - while this approach to history is great fun to read - it does not inspire great confidence.

More Forgotten Books at pattinase.