Necessary Deceptions: The Women of Wyatt Earp
Opening in San Francisco in 1871, this novel ends in Pinal, Arizona in 1888. The first protagonist, Sadie Josephine Marcuse, daughter of a poor immigrant family, despairs of attracting an eligible husband. To improve her chances, she drops the ‘e’ from her surname. ‘Marcus’ sounds better.
A small deception, but it sets the tone for the rest of her life. If facts don’t help the situation, invent a better version. As she matures, makes her living in a whorehouse but always seeking love and respectability, Sadie relies increasingly on her ability to come up with necessary deceptions. Meeting the charming, handsome and apparently respectable Wyatt Earp increases the need for fabrication of fact.
At about the same time as Sadie worries about attracting a husband, the second protagonist, teenager Celie Blaylock, on an Iowa farm, despairs of her life with a narrowly religious father and the impossibility of making a happy marriage. She runs away but also ends up in a whorehouse. There she meets the debonair, irresistible Wyatt Earp.
Both women claim to have been married to the footloose, irresponsible Wyatt, each often having to sell her body to rescue him from his latest self-inflicted disaster. Only one survived as his wife, living to the mid-20th century.
Many of the scenes in this novel take place in whorehouses in the lawless West. The narration, whether told to us by Celie or Josephine, is folksy and natural, giving a strong sense of place and character. It is a rapidly paced book, with twists and heartbreaks maintaining interest throughout. The novel shows evidence of extensive research and a perceptive winnowing of truths, half-truths and deceptions. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, one wonders how close the author has come to the truth about Wyatt Earp.
