This book takes the facts about Dr. John H. Holliday and breathes life back into Doc himself. The author has lived through many of the same most crucial moments as Doc; in fact, it is a name that his patients called him and still do. He is, like Doc, a Catholic. It is singularly amusing that they both have so many, many things in common, except that Pat stinks at poker most of the time. This is a very unique book. There has never been a book that tells the tale of Doc Holliday from Docs side as consistently as this, knowing the disease intimately and living with an almost identical set of symptoms. He has a chronic cough at times so severe that it results to severe pain in his intercostal (chest muscles) that lasts for three days, making it hard to breathe, move, or even bear down. Coughing or sneezing double him over. At times, he coughs up blood. He is often hypoxic and unsteady on his legs. He cannot walk without a cane due to dizziness. All this makes his appetite poor. He may be dizzy enough to fall down, with the room spinning and unable to move for twenty minutes to two hours. The facts were gathered for over forty-seven years of research, off and on. So it truly is a fictional book, perhaps more true to facts than a nonfictional one.

A fresh, lively retelling of the life of one of the most infamous characters of the Old West, Doc Holliday, by an imaginative, yet accurate storyteller.

Welcome to a West like you've never seen before! With the O. K. Corral and the battle with the thing that used to be Johnny Ringo behind him, the consumptive Doc Holliday makes his way to Deadwood, Colorado. But when a gambling loss drains his bankroll, Doc aims for quick cash as a bounty hunter. The biggest reward? Young, 20-year-old desperado known as Billy the Kid. With a steampunk twist on these classic characters, nothing can be as simple as it seems.

Acclaim for Doc Holliday "Splendid . . . not only the most readable yet definitive study of Holliday yet published, it is one of the best biographies of nineteenth-century Western 'good-bad men' to appear in the last twenty years. It was so vivid and gripping that I read it twice." --Howard R. Lamar, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University, and author of The New Encyclopedia of the American West "The history of the American West is full of figures who have lived on as romanticized legends. They deserve serious study simply because they have continued to grip the public imagination. Such was Doc Holliday, and Gary Roberts has produced a model for looking at both the life and the legend of these frontier immortals." --Robert M. Utley, author of The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull "Doc Holliday emerges from the shadows for the first time in this important work of Western biography. Gary L. Roberts has put flesh and soul to the man who has long been one of the most mysterious figures of frontier history. This is both an important work and a wonderful read." --Casey Tefertiller, author of Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend "Gary Roberts is one of a foremost class of writers who has created a real literature and authentic history of the so-called Western. His exhaustively researched and beautifully written Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend reveals a pathetically ill and tortured figure, but one of such intense loyalty to Wyatt Earp that it brought him limping to the O.K. Corral and into the glare of history." --Jack Burrows, author of John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was "Gary L. Roberts manifested an interest in Doc Holliday at a very early age, and he has devoted these past thirty-odd years to serious and detailed research in the development and writing of Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend. The world knows Holliday as Doc Holliday. Family members knew him as John. Somewhere in between the two lies the real John Henry Holliday. Roberts reflects this concept in his writing. This book should be of interest to Holliday devotees as well as newly found readers." --Susan McKey Thomas, cousin of Doc Holliday and coauthor of In Search of the Hollidays

John H. Holliday, D. D. S., better known as Doc Holliday, has become a legendary figure in the history of the American West. In Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait, Karen Holliday Tanner reveals the real man behind the legend. Shedding light on Holliday’s early years, in a prominent Georgia family during the Civil War and Reconstruction, she examines the elements that shaped his destiny: his birth defect, the death of his mother and estrangement from his father, and the diagnosis of tuberculosis, which led to his journey west. The influence of Holliday’s genteel upbringing never disappeared, but it was increasingly overshadowed by his emerging western personality. Holliday himself nurtured his image as a frontier gambler and gunman. Using previously undisclosed family documents and reminiscences as well as other primary sources, Tanner documents the true story of Doc’s friendship with the Earp brothers and his run-ins with the law, including the climactic shootout at the O. K. Corral and its aftermath. This first authoritative biography of Doc Holliday should appeal both to historians of the West and to general readers who are interested in his poignant story. "Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait will be considered the definitive Holliday biography and will supplant all previously published works on the man’s life as a complete and authoritative account. This book will undoubtedly take a place among the foremost books in the Western gunfighter genre." - Robert K. DeArment, author of Alias Frank Canton

Eaten by tuberculosis, sustained by alcohol, John Henry "Doc" Holliday walked the streets of Dodge City, Dallas, Denver, Leadville, Deadwood, and Tombstone in their roistering heydays. The frail-looking dentist could be deadly when the drink wore off and someone crossed him. Doc Holliday was a paradox: respectable citizen and notorious gambler, gentleman and murderer, married to a prostitute called Big-Nosed Kate but devoted only to the memory of his mother. Pat Jahns includes a full and exciting account of the shootout at the O.K. Corral.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Born to the life of a Southern gentleman, Dr. John Henry Holliday arrives on the Texas frontier hoping that the dry air and sunshine of the West will restore him to health. Soon, with few job prospects, Doc Holliday is gambling professionally with his partner, Mária Katarina Harony, a high-strung, classically educated Hungarian whore. In search of high-stakes poker, the couple hits the saloons of Dodge City. And that is where the unlikely friendship of Doc Holliday and a fearless lawman named Wyatt Earp begins— before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral links their names forever in American frontier mythology—when neither man wanted fame or deserved notoriety.