In case you missed them, some good 2016 reads

Since Nov. 9, 2016, I have been torn between the burning desire to know what the hell happened to bring the Donald down upon our heads and an even deeper desire to escape reality completely, to pull the blankets over my head and find some place where my own personal stakes aren’t as great, where I will face no serious future harm. In other words, I needed a good book. 

Figuring that I am not alone in these conflicting desires, here are a few books from 2016 that might provide respite, or understanding. Or both.

For escape, there are few better novels out right now than Mary Doria Russell’s work on the Old West. Begin with Doc, the first of two novels covering Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. 

Doc is all about the Doc Holliday you never knew. Through 40 films and hundreds of books about Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and the O.K. Corral, the story behind the gambler/gun fighter has never been told with the grace, compassion, and humor of Doc. Set mostly in Dodge City, Kansas, in 1878, the notorious gunfight at the O.K. Corral is still in the future. 

In a letter to Book Clubs, Russell writes:

The Doc Holliday of legend is a gambler and gunman who appears out of nowhere in 1881, arriving in Tombstone with a bad reputation and a hooker named Big Nose Kate. But I have written the story of Alice Holliday’s son: a scared, sick, lonely boy, born for the life of a minor aristocrat in a world that ceased to exist at the end of the Civil War, trying to stay alive on the rawest edge of the American frontier.

If you enjoyed Val Kilmer’s portrayal of Doc Holliday in Tombstone, you will love the man that Russell gives life to in Doc.

Epitaph follows Holliday and the Earp brothers to Tombstone and beyond, dealing with the political landscape as part of the background to the notorious 30-second gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

A deeply divided nation. Vicious politics. A shamelessly partisan media. A president scorned by half the populace. Smuggling and gang warfare along the Mexican border. Armed citizens willing to stand their ground and take law into their own hands. . . . That was America in 1881.