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Summary
Summary
In a letter to her daughter back East, Martha Jane is not shy about her own importance: "Martha Jane -- better known as Calamity -- is just one of the handful of aging legends who travel to London as part of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show in Buffalo Girls. As he describes the insatiable curiosity of Calamity's Indian friend No Ears, Annie Oakley's shooting match with Lord Windhouveren, and other highlights of the tour, McMurtry turns the story of a band of hardy, irrepressible survivors into an unforgettable portrait of love, fellowship, dreams, and heartbreak.
Author Notes
Larry McMurtry, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among other awards, is the author of twenty-four novels, two collections of essays, two memoirs, more than thirty screenplays, & an anthology of modern Western fiction. He lives in Archer City, Texas.
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Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Yearning for the excitement and good hunting of the pk Wild West, two mountain men and an old Indian scout dejectedly roam the prairie; an aging Calamity Jane composes brooding letters to her daughter; a madam closes her bordello to run a respectable hotel, symbolically ending the era. According to PW , ``McMurtry's genius with language always enchants, but this tale's charm is muffled by sadness.'' (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The final years of Calamity Jane are the frame for this stately and powerful eulogy to the Old West, setting for two of McMurtxy's finest novels (Lonesome Dove, 1985; Anything for Billy, 1988). It's around 1890 and Calamity, though only 38, is next to dead, a bag lady in buckskin trading her memories of Wild Bill Hickok for drink or a place to sleep. Only her love for her faraway daughter (Calamity's letters to ""Janey"" regularly punctuate the text) and for her friends--beautiful madam Dora Dufran, aging mountain men Jim Ragg and Bartle Bone, ancient Indian No Ears--keeps Calamity going At first, McMurty's narrative mirrors his heroine's tiled wanderings--slowly, painstakingly shading in characters against the mournful twilight landscape of the dying West. But when Buffalo Bill Cody charges in to corral Calamity and the others for his gimmicky Wild West Show, spirits rise and the pace does too, with humor salted in as the ""living le-legends"" sail to England. There, while Calamity carouses in English drinking halls, Sitting Bull tries to organize a party of braves to hunt the animals in the London Zoo; Annie Oakley roundly outshoots England's top marksman; Bartle Bone marries a young English whore; and No Ears acquires a set of wax ears to replace the ones cut off by French traders in his youth. This general fling at happiness proves as shallow as Cody's show, however, for back in the States tragedy strikes marly all. Battle Bone loses his wife, and Jim Ragg and No Ears lose their lives, while Dora Dufran, after giving birth, succumbs to fever and also dies. The narrative turns darker still in the final pages as, in a flurry of letters, a lonely, dying Calamity confesses bitter and stunning truths about Hickok, her daughter, and herself. Though rich with memorable characters, not nearly as much fun to read as McMurtry's earlier, rousing Old West novels; but, after a slow start, still effectively melancholic and haunting, like watching flickering black-and-white footage of loved ones long gone. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
McMurtry, a prolific mythologizer/demythologizer of the Old West, here takes on Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Canary, 1852?-1903)--who confesses in a series of letters to being a drunken hell-raiser but never an outlaw--and sundry larger-than-life cohorts. The author's talent for characterizations and storytelling shines as he depicts gritty events and relationships in the life of fur trappers and Indians who, along with Calamity Jane, must resort to performing in Bill Cody's Wild West show in order to survive. They exploit and are exploited by their frontier lifestyle before being defeated by it in the end. A spellbinding saga with a surprise ending. Highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/90.-- Will Hepfer, SUNY at Buffalo Libs. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
