The Fourth Horseman

An epic historical novel follows Doc Holliday, the legendary gunfighter and gambler, from a promising dental career cut short by tuberculosis, to his trip West and into history as the lone outsider at the infamous OK Corral gunfight. Reprint.

John Henry "Doc" Holliday first confronted death as an adolescent in Reconstruction Georgia in the mid-1860s. With Yankee carpetbaggers working diligently to strip what remained of southern dignity, young John shot a man when he bragged of molesting John's mother. After his father sent him away to protect him from the law, he gambled, drank, and immersed himself in the pleasures of the flesh. With the onset of tuberculosis, he went West, falling in with the Earp brothers and participating in the infamous shootout at the OK Corral. Eickhoff's Holliday is a symbol of the West itself, burning brightly but ever so briefly as encroaching civilization extinguished the flame. Although Eickhoff imbues Holliday with a mythic grandeur that--especially near the conclusion--becomes burdensome, this is still a great adventure, well told. (One cautionary note: southerner Holliday's attitude toward the black Union occupation troops is brutally racist.) Wes Lukowsky