The Calamity Papers

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 1 DEC. 2004

Western historian Walker rounds up some of the Old West's most colorful characters, including Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, Meriwether Lewis and Jack London, for this entertaining rehash of tall tales. Walker doesn't have anything new to present, but he does a good job of re-telling these intriguing stories. He considers whether both Lewis's and London's deaths were murder or suicide, and resolves the nature of the relationship between Jane and Wild Bill. Musings on the demise of lesser-known figures such as Tom Meagher, Pat Garrett and Albert Jennings Fountain will be of interest principally to Western fans. Walker's got an enjoyable knack for purple prose: characters are "shadowy" or "even shadowier," and "walk across each other's shadow." Occasionally, however, his sentences seem to get away from him, as in 'bad land'...can be seen between these ancient formations in the 275 square miles of blinding, shifting, cresting, slumping, eastward-drifting sahara of gypsum known as the White Sands." Walker also has a tendency to repeat quotations from his research, a tick that gives his book an amateurish quality that unfortunately belies his meticulous work. For a quick dip into the "cold cases" of the American West, though, Walker's compilation would be hard to beat.