Masterson

The frontier lawman Bat Masterson spent the last two decades of his life as a sports editor in New York. He and his wife set out to revisit the west where he became a legend, only to discover that now there are wheat farmers and Prohibition—and an effort to blot out the Wild West of the past. "In 1919, legendary gunfighter Bat Masterson is a 64-year-old New York City sportswriter who suddenly becomes worried about the inglorious and mostly false reputation he has endured for decades... The journey is a hoot when the old lawman finds out the public wants the legend, not the truth.... This is classic Wheeler, a solid story about real people told with wit, compassion, and a bit of whimsy." —Publishers Weekly This novel won a Spur Award from Western Writers of America in 2000. In 1919, on the eve of Prohibition, Bat Masterson, legendary gunfighter and a sports columnist in New York for two decades, is ill and thinking of his youth as a frontier lawman. He is bothered by the legendry that has dogged his footsteps, and on impulse he heads west with his wife, Emma, to revisit his past. Traveling back to Dodge City, through Colorado, and on to Los Angeles, Masterson ponders the legend that he has become and the elusive truth behind the lies. As America shifts into a new era, can one man reclaim his life from dime novelists and make sense of a story whose truths may never be known?