Mary Doria Russell is a fine writer and I would recommend anything she has written. Doc is a novel based on the life of Doc John Henry Holliday. I’ve always had a fascination with Doc Holliday – maybe because he spent the end of his days in Glenwood Springs, maybe because he was ill with TB for so long and still a larger than life character.

Russell brings readers the story of Doc as a boy in Georgia, who probably should have never survived birth, but did thanks to the efforts of his mother – a woman who faced life’s problems head on with courage. Thanks to his surgeon uncle and his mother’s care, tutoring and love, John Henry had a sense of who he was and where he came from, and he did become a dentist. He had TB by the time he was 21 and moved West for the drier climate. He met a prostitute, Kate, who was also a survivor and feisty. This is about their time in Dodge, with the Earps, Bat Masterson and many you’ll recognize from the films about the Wyatt Earp.

Russell’s careful research and beautiful writing will help readers know and understand a more realistic Doc Holliday and not the one we all know from dime store novels and movies. It is out in early May. She’ll be at the Tattered Cover Book Store in mid-May.

Lisa