Wyatt Earp, horse thief? Just one of many surprising possibilities raised in Casey Tefertiller’s Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend.

In a refreshing change from biographies taking the “Child is father of the Man” approach, the author wastes no time getting on with Earp’s story. Wyatt is an adult by page 3, is enforcing the law by page 10, and we find ourselves in Tombstone by page 34, where we stay for almost two-thirds the length of the book.

The portrait of Wild West culture is vivid. Gambling was legal and practically had the status of a necessary community function. Prostitution was often legal too, and if it happened not to be then the women whose trade it was occasionally were arrested for no purpose other than to collect fines that served as unofficial licensing fees. I found it intriguing how people of Wyatt’s time argued the same questions related to law enforcement that heat up debates today: Order at all cost, or risk the imperfections of due process that allow some guilty people to go free? Frontier law enforcement ca. 1880 didn’t have much CSI stuff so it was difficult to secure convictions in the face of scant evidence and possibly corrupted testimony. No wonder citizens were so at odds. I was surprised how willing were lawmen of the West to make carrying arms illegal within town limits. Heck, Wyatt “even refused to carry a gun much of the time he wore a badge.” And that wasn’t because people in cow towns and mining communities were gentle.

Wyatt’s experience in Tombstone was tragic not just for what happened there but also for how debates surrounding the events harried him to the end of his days. I had imagined his contemporaries saw him as a hero. During his lifetime, though, his reputation was controversial and not all his acts viewed as decent or above suspicion—some thought him a bad and murderous man. Tefertiller is good at explaining why, and overall he has done a thorough, proficient job of writing Wyatt’s biography. It’s a long book and not always sprightly but fans of the Old West will get a lot out of it. I’ve little doubt I’ll read it again. ( )

If you thought you knew a little about Wyatt Earp that will all change after reading, "Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend". Author Casey Terfertiller's painstaking research in the life of the great lawman is impressive, leaves no stone unturned, and will give readers accurate information they might not have known about one of the West's great legends. The book spends less than 3 pages on the life of young Wyatt, instead picking up his story as he entered his twenties and began an on-and-off-again career in law enforcement. Terfertiller introduces the reader relatively quickly to other important characters in Wyatt's life, including the Masterson brothers, Doc Holliday, Johnny Behan, Ike Clanton, Josie Marcus, and of course, his brothers Virgil and Morgan.

Wyatt's life - both good and bad - is presented to the reader as he makes his way from Ellsworth to Wichita to Dodge City and then to Tombstone. An interesting factoid raised throughout the book is the that the amount of time Wyatt spent as a gambler and faro dealer far exceeded his time as a lawman. Terfertiller lays bare the entire story of the gunfight at the OK Corral (which could have been just as easily known as the gunfight in front of Fly's Photo Gallery). Using a lot of previously uncited witness testimony (much of it that came out later in the murder trial against the Earps and Holliday), Terfertiller casts enough doubt in the minds of readers to make them wonder whether the McLaurys and Billy Clanton were gunned down in cold blood or whether the lawman were provoked into shooting the trio of "Cowboys".
The book continues far beyond when most of the legend ended. It follows Wyatt and new wife, Josie (Sadie) Marcus on their journeys to Alaska, San Francisco, Colorado, and other spots looking for gambling or mining riches.

Reading this book is a daunting task because publisher MJF Books (in a decision to cut costs, I suppose) decided to take 600 pages of material and jam it into 344 pages. The print is extremely small and tight making it hard to read it too long in one sitting. If you can get past that though, you'll find a "soul's bared" story about a man who was part hero, part killer, part gambler, but All American in the sense that he was a major part of our country's wild western history. ( )

A balanced portrayal of both the man and the myth. Wyatt's post-Tombstone life took him first to Denver, then the mining towns of the West, the San Francisco and Los Angeles and even to Alaska. Tombstone was one of several controversies during his adventurous life. ( )

I started reading this a long time ago after a trip to Tombstone. I might pick it up again now that I'm going back. The story is very complicated though, and since the elements of his story are fairly disputable, it's not easy to follow.