• Based on in-depth historical research, Lady at the OK Corral draws from such rare, original sources as Josephine’s unpublished memoir and her personal letters, a number of which are held by private collections.

• Lady at the OK Corral uncovers the conflicts and questions about American history that are dramatized in Josephine’s story: the end of the real American frontier and the rise of its mythology; the spread of railroads and industrialization; the seismic shifts in public attitudes towards prostitution, gambling, and alcohol, and the untold stories of the fearless women who helped develop the American frontier.

• Ann Kirschner was named one of New York Magazine’s “Millennium New Yorkers” and honored as a distinguished graduate of Princeton University and the University of Buffalo. 
 
 
 

For nearly fifty years, she was the common-law wife of the most famous lawman of the Old West. Yet Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp has nearly been erased from Western lore. In this fascinating biography, Ann Kirschner brings Josephine out of the shadows of history to at last tell her full story—a spirited and colorful tale of ambition, adventure, self-invention, and devotion reflective of America itself, from the post-Civil War years to World War II.

How did this aspiring actress and dancer—a flamboyant, curvaceous Jewish girl with a persistent New York accent—land in Tombstone, Arizona, and steal the heart of Wyatt Earp? What inspired five decades of adventure-seeking that led from the Arizona Territory to Alaska to Hollywood? And what sustained her lifelong partnership with a man of uncommon charisma and complex heroism?

Answering these questions, Kirschner offers a rare look at a woman’s life on the frontier and sheds new light on the iconic gunfight that made Wyatt Earp a legend, revealing Josephine’s place at its center. Lady at the OK Corral introduces a vivacious woman with a magnetic personality who was equally at home in the deserts of the American Southwest and the boomtowns of the Alaskan Gold Rush, in the opulent hotels of San Diego and San Francisco in the Gay ’90s and in rough mining camps, gaudy gambling casinos, racetracks, and boxing arenas, and on Hollywood back lots visiting Cecil B. DeMille and Samuel Goldwyn.

Spanning more than half a century, this engaging narrative biography brings Josephine to the forefront of her own story, and offers a fresh look at a remarkable era in American history.