Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Doc by Mary Doria Russell - Available

Doc

A Novel

#1 in series

by Mary Doria Russell
Mark Bramhall
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
2 of 2 copies available
The year is 1878, peak of the Texas cattle trade. The place is Dodge City, Kansas, a saloon-filled cow town jammed with liquored-up adolescent cowboys and young Irish hookers. Violence is random and routine, but when the burned body of a mixed-blood boy named Johnnie Sanders is discovered, his death shocks a part-time policeman named Wyatt Earp. And it is a matter of strangely personal importance to Doc Holliday, the frail twenty-six-year-old dentist who has just opened an office at No. 24, Dodge House.
 
Beautifully educated, born to the life of a Southern gentleman, Dr. John Henry Holliday is given an awful choice at the age of twenty-two: die within months in Atlanta or leave everyone and everything he loves in the hope that the dry air and sunshine of the West will restore him to health. Young, scared, lonely, and sick, he arrives on the rawest edge of the Texas frontier just as an economic crash wrecks the dreams of a nation. Soon, with few alternatives open to him, Doc Holliday is gambling professionally; he is also living with Mária Katarina Harony, a high-strung Hungarian whore with dazzling turquoise eyes, who can quote Latin classics right back at him. Kate makes it her business to find Doc the high-stakes poker games that will support them both in high style. It is Kate who insists that the couple travel to Dodge City, because “that’s where the money is.”
And that is where the unlikely friendship of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp really begins—before Wyatt Earp is the prototype of the square-jawed, fearless lawman; before Doc Holliday is the quintessential frontier gambler; before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral links their names forever in American frontier mythology—when neither man wanted fame or deserved notoriety.
Authentic, moving, and witty, Mary Doria Russell’s fifth novel redefines these two towering figures of the American West and brings to life an extraordinary cast of historical characters, including Holliday’s unforgettable companion, Kate. First and last, however, Doc is John Henry Holliday’s story, written with compassion, humor, and respect by one of our greatest contemporary storytellers.

  • Creators

  • Series

    Doc Holliday

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 3, 2011

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780307877895
      • File size: 479341 KB
      • Duration: 16:38:37

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Focusing on the man he was and not on the legend he became, Russell's novel masterfully imagines John Henry "Doc" Holliday's everyday life. With a growly Southern drawl straight out of central casting, narrator Mark Bramhall saunters through the narration as confidently as Doc once strolled the dusty streets of nineteenth-century Kansas. Utilizing diverse drawls to differentiate infamous gunslingers--including Doc, Bat Masterson, and the Earp brothers--Bramhall also fluently transitions into international accents that reflect the ever-expanding influx of immigrants at the time from China and Europe. Bramhall's soulful performance will resonate with listeners, who will hear John Henry's passion for dentistry and love for his common-law wife, a prostitute, as well as his acceptance of his own fate in the face of death. A.R.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 21, 2011
      Russell (Dreamers of the Day) brings lethal Dodge City to life in a colorful group-portrait of famous frontiersmen years before many of them would pass into legend at the O.K. Corral. After a tense childhood in Civil Warâtorn Georgia and the loss of his beloved mother, young John Henry "Doc" Holliday moves west in hopes of ameliorating the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him, relocating in the late 1870s to Kansas, where he divides his time among his poorly paying vocation of dentistry, lucrative gambling, and his fractious relationship with Kate Harony, a cultured, Hungarian-born prostitute. In a tale notable more for a remarkable cast than orderliness of plot, the rising tension between the corrupt, carousing, and well-armed inhabitants of Dodge and the forces of law represented by the moralistic Wyatt Earp and his brother, Morgan, makes a spectacular background to a memorable year-in-the-life tale of a fiery young Southern gentleman whose loyalty to his friends and love of music outshine even his fragile health and the whiskey-soaked violence of the western frontier.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading
Check Out What's Being Checked Out Right Now