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Doc

by Mary Doria Russell (Goodreads Author)

3.95 of 5 stars 3.95 · rating details · 4,513 ratings · 1,167 reviews

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 stran...more 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. (less)

Hardcover, 394 pages

Published May 3rd 2011 by Random House (first published January 1st 2011)

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Historical Fiction 2011

46th out of 115 books — 582 voters

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Literary Westerns

7th out of 57 books — 67 voters

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Mar 12, 2012 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, historical-fiction, audiobook, ebooks, literature, western, biographies

No offense to daises like Kirk Douglas, Victor Mature, Dennis Quaid or Sam Gilman**...but when it comes to Doc Holiday this will always be my huckleberry:

Tombstone is one of my favorite ~~westerns~~ movies of all time and I could give a rat’s rancid ass that it’s as hollywood a rendition of the Earp/Holliday story as there’s even been...in this instance, Hollywood knocked the cover off the ball.

I wanted you to know where I was coming from vis a vis Doc so that you could put my review in some conte...more

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Apr 16, 2013 Amanda rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: kick-ass

A youth in the South. An education in the North. Bred for life in the East. Trying not to die in the West.

This synopsis of the life of John Henry "Doc" Holliday is elegant in its simplicity and perhaps holds more truth about his life than the hundreds of thousands of words that have been written about him.

I will confess that my earliest exposure to Doc Holliday was Val Kilmer's excellent portrayal in Tombstone. I have probably watched that movie in its entirety no less than 15 times; however, I...more A youth in the South. An education in the North. Bred for life in the East. Trying not to die in the West.

This synopsis of the life of John Henry "Doc" Holliday is elegant in its simplicity and perhaps holds more truth about his life than the hundreds of thousands of words that have been written about him.

I will confess that my earliest exposure to Doc Holliday was Val Kilmer's excellent portrayal in Tombstone. I have probably watched that movie in its entirety no less than 15 times; however, I've always known that, as is true with so much history, it's a super-charged, testosterone fueled, balls out version of events that plays up the romanticism of the Old West and made giants of common men in uncommon circumstances. Unlike so many movies and books about him, Doc by Mary Doria Russell is not interested in perpetuating the reputation of Doc Holliday as a cold-blooded killer and a ruthless gambler, but instead focuses on trying to restore humanity to a man whose world was broken by war and sickness and shaped by the luck of the draw.

Doc is not a biography, but instead a fictional account of Doc's life from birth up through his years in Dodge City, where Russell imagines the circumstances that would cement his friendship with the Earp brothers. Using the framework of Wyatt and Doc's friendship with the fictional John Horse Sanders and the mysterious circumstances of his death, Russell explores the lives of John Henry Holliday, dentist by day, gambler by night; his tempestuous and fiercely intelligent companion, Kate Harony; a reticent and doggedly honest Wyatt Earp; Mattie Blaylock, already ruined and addicted to laudanum when she enters Wyatt's life; the friendly and intelligent Morgan Earp; the vain Bat Masterson. In doing so, she brings the society of Dodge City to life and vividly paints a portrayal of a town at the edge of the American frontier where the law had no finer points other than "Don't shoot the customers." Lawmen like Wyatt Earp were expected to do little more than keep the drovers who came to Dodge at the end of a cattle drive from killing each other before they could spend the season's wages on whores, alcohol, and gambling. While Dodge prospered, there was a ruthless, mean edge to its economic principles.

Born to Georgian aristocracy, classically educated, trained as a dentist, raised for the life of a gentleman, and already diagnosed with tuberculosis, a town like Dodge should have consumed a man like Doc Holliday who seemed so ill-suited to a rough-and-tumble lifestyle. Instead, Doc's recognition of life as the ultimate gamble ("Bein' born is craps . . . How we live is poker") served well in equipping him with the ability to make the most of a poor hand. Suffering from a cleft palate that his uncle repaired once the baby became healthy enough, Doc had been born struggling to cling to whatever life chance would allow. This resilience, along with a sharp tongue and an intellectual's curiosity, helped sustain him during his exile West and enabled him to make a family of friends to substitute the one he longed for back East.

Russell also reminds us of the Doc Holliday that existed beneath the swagger and bravado--a man, little more than a boy, who knew he walked in death's shadow, but was determined not to allow death to claim its prize too soon. The pain of Doc's circumstances, especially in a town where young men treated life so carelessly as they courted danger, is evident: "Certain that if he were to move at all--even slightly, even to speak--everything human in him would be lost to blind, bestial, ungovernable rage, John Henry Holiday sat silently while in the coldest, most analytical part of him, he thought, If I go mad one day, it will be at a moment like this. I will put a bullet through the lung of some healthy young idiot just to watch him suffocate. There you are, I'll tell him. That's what it's like to know your last breath is in your past. You won't ever get enough air again. From this moment until you die, it will only get worse and worse."

Doc is not a fast-paced book, but it is a beautiful one. Often funny, philosophical, and gritty, it honors the men and women at its core and removes them from the lofty heights of myth and returns them where they belong--firmly on the earth they walked not as titans, but as mortals.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder and at Shelf Inflicted
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May 30, 2011 Jeanette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-fiction, america, historical-fiction, four-star-fiction, av

Summer of 1878. The much-too-famous thirty seconds of shooting at the O.K. Corral was three years in the future. Doc Holliday was in Dodge City, Kansas. It was here that he cemented his friendship with the Earp brothers---Wyatt, Morgan, and James. By this time, John Henry "Doc" Holliday was already a dentist, an accomplished pianist, and a formidable opponent at the high-stakes card games. He was also plagued by a nasty case of tuberculosis, which had driven him West for the drier air.

Doc arriv...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Chrissie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: kindle, usa, sample-g, bio, hf

NO SPOILERS!!!!!

I chose to read this book because I very much liked Mary Doria Russell's novel A Thread of Grace. I enjoy historical fiction, but not science fiction, the genre of several other of the author's books. True, I was not terribly interested in a cowboy story, but in a good author's hands almost any topic is interesting. So I was willing to give this a chance. I am glad I read the novel, but I do not believe it matches up with "A Thread of Grace",

This book is not primarily about the 1...more NO SPOILERS!!!!!

I chose to read this book because I very much liked Mary Doria Russell's novel A Thread of Grace. I enjoy historical fiction, but not science fiction, the genre of several other of the author's books. True, I was not terribly interested in a cowboy story, but in a good author's hands almost any topic is interesting. So I was willing to give this a chance. I am glad I read the novel, but I do not believe it matches up with "A Thread of Grace",

This book is not primarily about the 1881 shoot-out in Tombstone, Arizona, but it is about the same individuals of this event and following events. It is about the personalities of Doc Holliday and his flames, Wyatt Earp and his family, and it is about life in Dodge City, Kansas, prior to the gunfight at the OK Corral. It is about life in this place and at this time. It is about saloons, and whore houses and brawls and cowboy life. Life as it was for both women and men in the West. It is very much about dentistry and consumption and cleanliness or lack thereof…… It is also very much about people of different personalities. The book starts with a listing of all the people in the book. My first thought was – how am I going to keep track of all these people?! That is no problem. Each one becomes a real character; each has their own idiosyncrasies. Your heart will bleed for some. You will feel pity for others. You will get angry at some, and you simply nod when some of them make the choices they do because although you personally would never make such choices you do understand why they make these choices. So, character portrayal is very well done.

The author has given us an "Author's Note" that clearly explains what is fictitious and what isn't. She sticks to the known facts as much as possible. I believe in the character portrayals she has drawn. She has done her homework regarding treatment of tuberculosis in the 1800s and of dentistry and off other historical events.

The author is fluent in several languages. She has an appreciation for music and Greek mythology. She throws all these elements into the novel and thus makes the story even more interesting. There is French and Latin and poetry and cowboy songs and classical music and Greek mythology. There are bits about Seminole Indians and the Civil War. There is a lot to suck on.

So what are my complaints? As I said above, and this cannot be termed a complaint, cowboy stories are just not my top reading choice, but this does affects how many stars I will give the book. However sometimes I would think - please, please, please get to the point. The book should have been tightened up a bit. While every sentence in the last few chapters is utterly perfect, the middle chapters were too long and winding. Some of the details were a bit superfluous. But then the wide range of facts will draw a larger reading group……I am giving the stars, and I was bored sometimes.

I ended up feeling: Yup, I liked this book and I am glad I read it. I could have been carried away by the ending and given it more stars, but when you judge a book it is the whole book. Right? I definitely liked the book and can recommend reading it. But hey, it is not a light read. TB is a horrible illness and you will suffer alongside Doc. What a horrible illness TB was. If you read this book, you will come to understand that.
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Jul 10, 2012 Katy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: fans of the Wild West

Recommended to Katy by: Amazon.com Vine

Book info Genre: Historical Fiction/Western Reading Level Adult

Disclosure: I received a free paperback ARC uncorrected proof from Amazon Vine in exchange for an honest review.

Book read late March to early April, 2011 and review written 4/5/2011

Synopsis: 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 wit...more Book info Genre: Historical Fiction/Western Reading Level Adult

Disclosure: I received a free paperback ARC uncorrected proof from Amazon Vine in exchange for an honest review.

Book read late March to early April, 2011 and review written 4/5/2011

Synopsis: 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.

My Thoughts: I've always had a fascination for the "Wild West" - I've felt a strange connection to the characters of the time and the ideals of Western living. Doc is fictional, but based strongly in fact as well - written like a biography of Doc Holliday - with a great deal about the Earps and Mastersons and various people in Dodge, Kansas - it is very convincing and several times led me to Wikipedia to try to determine the truth or fallacy of the statements made in the text. It begins with his youth in Georgia and follows him through his travels, eventually ending in Dodge. Once he leaves Dodge, we're left with only second-hand accounts for some reason - but up to and including Dodge, the story is pretty complete.

This was a slow-reading book - it took me a couple weeks to get through it - mostly because much of the story is really quite heart-rending. John Henry "Doc" Holliday was a well-educated and thoughtful man, albeit spendthrift and often razor-tongued, and "watching" him die a long, slow death from tuberculosis was quite painful. The fact that the book so affected me is a positive - you really get to feel for these people while you are reading this account of their lives.

Anyone who enjoys historical fiction, fictional biographies and/or the Wild West should enjoy this book. It's due out in about a month, so be sure to mark your calendars to pick it up! (Review written 4/5/11)(less)

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May 21, 2011 Genia Lukin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical

The force of any book of Mary Doria Russell's, in my mind, is the ability she has to look back on history, and treat the people making it with almost infinite individual compassion.

This is the sort of compassion she brings to bear while writing the story of Doc Henry John Holliday, famous Wild West gunman, dentist, and consumptive.

In one of her earlier interviews, Russell stated that she'd fallen 'in love' with Doc Holliday, and it is clear from the tone of the book that this is very much the ca...more The force of any book of Mary Doria Russell's, in my mind, is the ability she has to look back on history, and treat the people making it with almost infinite individual compassion.

This is the sort of compassion she brings to bear while writing the story of Doc Henry John Holliday, famous Wild West gunman, dentist, and consumptive.

In one of her earlier interviews, Russell stated that she'd fallen 'in love' with Doc Holliday, and it is clear from the tone of the book that this is very much the case; at least platonically.This is, bar none, the most flattering account of both the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday I can think of. It is so flattering, in fact, that, despite its obviously meticulously researched detail and the realistic feel of the place and time, one has to wonder regarding its genuine historical veracity.

But, whether it is 100% real or not, Russell leaves you with a feel of genuine admiration to the people she writes about, a feel of true and deep empathy to them that carries on a wave of energy from the author to the reader.

Russell's account does not go as far as the notorious fight at the O.K. Corral, and the events following. Perhaps because she doesn't want to spoil her portrait of the man Doc Holliday was with the man he was to become. Yet her portrayal is not one-dimensional; Holliday is a gambler, an alcoholic, though by necessity, a man with a fierce and flaring temper who cannot leave well enough alone, and his judgment, in general, is lacking in prudence to the extreme. Russell does not leave these things out; she simply makes them seem like fringe issues to the larger whole. Which is, in all, not a bad thing.

Russell's tendency to write books which are, at bottom, philosophical, reflects herself in the underlying theme she sets down for the narrative, and maintains throughout; the double lives and identities of an inherently unhappy world. All the people in the book: the whores, the gunmen, the priests, are possessed of secret lives, 'ghost lives', the possibility of what could have been if the world was a better place. If their past was not haunting them. if circumstances were not extreme, and harsh, and pressing. If money wasn't master. The ifs embedded in it are immense, and constant, and very disconcerting.

The other thing which permeates the narrative is the underlying unhappiness of the well-educated, cultured man, alone in what he, himself, views as a wilderness. Russell is very much isolated in her admiration of that education, and the explication of the feeling of weariness that lack of ability to exercise it brings, in the field of American, highly anti-intellectual narrative. She seems entirely willing to come out and say, hands down, that it is a cause of unhappiness to a person to be unable to live, and converse, at the cultural level to which they are accustomed. That it is a lack in others even if they know it not that their world is shallow, tiny, and provincial. That it, too, creates a wall around their existence that they don't even know better than to try and shatter.

Of course, the book is not without its flaws. It's been remarked, and I cofess I must agree, that at times the sheer scope of the narrative turns it from a story into a sort of raconteurish history lesson. That, while still well-written and presented, lends itself to a feeling of distance from the narrative that decreases from its power and emotional pathos. This book is, therefore, no Thread of Grace in the sheer horrifying, humbling, personal nature of its narration and style. Nevertheless, the parts that do get close and personal still retain the ability to convey to the reader the emotions existing in the author's mind, and so the book is not badly damaged.

It is a pity this is not a larger book, which would have given the author more ability to write in detailed, closely-examined scenes rather than broad, sweeping strokes. But, considering the time it took her to write it, we are perhaps lucky we didn't have to wait for it even longer.(less)

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Apr 08, 2012 Ashleycarolhall O'Toole rated it 4 of 5 stars

I just learned the Doc Holliday was born with a cleft palate.

I thought this book was amazing. That being said it was a little long and it went from story to fact occasionally at the end of a chapter.
That being said...
if you have ever had ANY interest in Doc Holliday, you will enjoy this book. Russell uses as much factual information as possible in regards to Doc, The Earps, dentistry, horses, cards, you name it. Oh, all the different languages in the story!

I have always loved the character Doc...more

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May 11, 2013 Pat rated it 4 of 5 stars

Who hasn't seen a movie or read a book about the Shootout at the O.K. Corral. The Earp Brothers and Doc Holliday.

Russell writes beautifully. Weaving a story of Dodge City, Kansas in the 1800's and the very young John "Doc" Holliday's life. Diagnosed with advanced pulmonary tuberculosis after dental school, Holliday sets off from his beloved home in Georgia, to the West for a more curative climate. The same disease that had killed his beloved mother. He lands in Texas and then Dodge City; where...more

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May 28, 2011 Misfit rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: amazon-vine, western

"That was the fork in the road. That was when everything might have changed."

This book might be better named as Doc, the early years, because if you are expecting Doc's story to take you on to Tombstone and the infamous shootout at the OK Corral you are going to be sorely disappointed. That said, this was still an enjoyable novel and should interest those hankering for a closer look at the enigmatic John Henry "Doc" Holliday and the short time he lived in Dodge City, Kansas. Georgia born and a g...more "That was the fork in the road. That was when everything might have changed."

This book might be better named as Doc, the early years, because if you are expecting Doc's story to take you on to Tombstone and the infamous shootout at the OK Corral you are going to be sorely disappointed. That said, this was still an enjoyable novel and should interest those hankering for a closer look at the enigmatic John Henry "Doc" Holliday and the short time he lived in Dodge City, Kansas. Georgia born and a gentleman, Doc is ready to begin his dental practice when he's diagnosed with tuberculosis and he travels west in hopes of finding a climate better suited to his lungs. The dental business doesn't pay well and Doc soon spends more time in the gambling rooms and he's soon *hitched up* with the Earp brothers, Katie Elder and more as a chain of events begins to bring them all together and fate sets them on the path to Tombstone, Arizona.

"When I am like this, dentistry is beyond me. So I play cards."

The good stuff:

I very much liked how the characters were written, especially Doc (oooh, that bit on the piano at the last), and how someone gentleman born and bred could have fallen in with the crowd he did and set his life on a most unexpected path. I also liked how the author was able to show the reader the constant struggle he led because of the tuberculosis, and she did so without clubbing the reader over the head with it. My favorite quote,

"...for the Kansas sky is black velvet on clear, cool December nights, and the Milky Way is strung across it like the diamond necklace of a crooked banker's mistress."

The so-so stuff:

I didn't realize going into this book that the main focus was on his time in Dodge City in 1878 and his more infamous years would only get a brief mention, so I was somewhat disappointed in that and kept hoping for Doc and the Earp boys to get out of Dodge already. Despite a very helpful list of characters at the front, I still found it a bit too busy with the secondary characters and I felt lost more than once and had to refer to the front more than I would typically care for - and would probably drive e-book readers batty going back and forth (how do you do that anyway?). I also found myself reading along, very much enjoying the author's writing style, and then realizing I didn't understand one whit of what had just transpired. Perhaps it was just me again, it wouldn't be the first time ;)

Despite my quibbles, this was a good solid read and one I'd recommend to those interested in the period.

My copy courtesy of Amazon Vine. All quotes are from an advanced reader copy.
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Jun 04, 2011 Tiki rated it 4 of 5 stars

A very sympathetic portrayal of John Henry Holliday according to other bios I've just read. But what a character Doc was and what a tragic life! Reading this very well written novel has altered my view on the 'wild west' which continues to this day in AZ. If the OK Corral shootout had not occurred, Doc and the Earps would not have achieved their notoriety and would have just gone down in history as characters who helped shaped Dodge City. The novel brings home the tragedy of tuberculosis in addi...more

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Apr 16, 2011 Amy Sturgis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 21st-century, western, first-reads, historical-fiction

I received this novel as part of the Goodreads First Reads program.

Mary Doria Russell still has "it," that indefinable storyteller quality that made The Sparrow one of my favorite novels of all time.

In this work of historical fiction, Russell paints a portrait of Doc Holliday's years in Dodge City, Kansas. It's a very compelling and moving story, and in the telling the reader gets to know famous figures such as Wyatt and Morgan Earp, and not-so-famous figures from different races, nationalities,...more I received this novel as part of the Goodreads First Reads program.

Mary Doria Russell still has "it," that indefinable storyteller quality that made The Sparrow one of my favorite novels of all time.

In this work of historical fiction, Russell paints a portrait of Doc Holliday's years in Dodge City, Kansas. It's a very compelling and moving story, and in the telling the reader gets to know famous figures such as Wyatt and Morgan Earp, and not-so-famous figures from different races, nationalities, and walks of life. Russell does an exceptional job of revealing the many disparate threads that came together to form the tapestry of the West, from whores and cattlemen to missionaries and runaways. She's at her best allowing the characters to represent different perspectives and underscore various prejudices. When conflicting interests collide in Dodge, the politics are fascinating, and Russell through Holliday gives us a front row seat.

The part of this history I know best -- that is, Native America -- is well handled here, and I applaud the effortless way Russell worked in the important story of John Horse and the Black Seminoles.

Holliday's story is incredibly poignant, as is that of his companion Kate, a Hungarian-born noblewoman-turned-frontier prostitute. I especially appreciated the trouble Russell took to introduce the characters in the front matter (both historical and fictional) and explain in the back matter where she took the greatest poetic license (and why). Russell de-emphasizes the shooting at the OK Corral with good reason, but provides enough information to give closure to Doc's story.

Furthermore, Russell uses Holliday as a window into big ideas (about education, about power, about nobility), and therefore the novel really transcends its genre. In other words, it has something to say even to those who aren't particularly smitten with the history of the West.

Anyone looking for excellent, well researched, thought-provoking fiction that provides both insights about the historical time period and a rewarding journey with a meaningful character will enjoy this a great deal.(less)

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Aug 07, 2011 Candice rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this not because of the subject, but because I want to read every book that Mary Doria Russell writes. Like all of her other books, the writing here is superb. Doc gives a good background to the legendary Doc Holliday and the Earps and Bat Masterson. Dodge City in the 1870s comes alive and you get the feeling of what it was like to be a woman in that time and place. An unnamed character in this novel is tuberculosis - what it's like to live, and to die, with this disease. A truly absorbin...more

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Aug 30, 2012 Donna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, in-person-book-groups

4.5 stars. First of all, I'm not a big fan of westerns so I was slightly uncertain about this book but I’ve enjoyed other works by Russell so I thought it was worth a try and I’m very glad I did.

The real Doc Holliday was so much more than the larger than life legend of TV and movies. He was a Southern gentleman, very well educated, and suffering from tuberculosis. He leaves everything behind in Georgia and heads west in the hopes that the drier climate will improve his health. Unfortunately, the...more

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Sep 24, 2011 Linda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wow, I have had this audio book for some time and for some reason, just put off starting it. Probably because I was thinking "Western" and just not sure I was in the mood. I should have known better, considering the fact that I know Mary Doria Russell is an excellent author. It is a novel about Doc Holliady, but not told in the style of Gunfight at the OK Corral, not even close. I have a feeling I will rate it a 4 star by the time I have finished reading it.

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Jul 24, 2011 Michelle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-fiction

I read this based on the joint recommendation of K Huck and L. Bunker. I enjoyed it very much. In particular I loved the way the author fictionalized the characters who are familiar names to all good Dodge Citians. Highly recommended - I rarely give five stars, but this one earned them.

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Mar 21, 2012 Peggy rated it 3 of 5 stars

I wavered between two stars and three stars because the first half of the book had such a slow pace. I'm usually a fast reader but it took a week to reach page 187 and I was almost ready to stop reading. The story does pick up then and I was able to finish it within two days.

Tombstone is one of my favorite movies and Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday was very similar to Russell's Doc; bits of the dialogue in the book were echoes from the movie, although used in different scenarios.

Russell's descriptio...more

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Jun 04, 2011 Joanne rated it 4 of 5 stars

Her first book, The Sparrow, was science fiction for people who didn't like science fiction, and it was superb. This fictionalized biography of Doc Holliday shows a great deal of research and introduced this reader to wonderful characters she knew nothing about. This is a western for people who don't like westerns, and it transported me to Dodge City for a while. I'm glad I read it.

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Dec 27, 2011 Jenny Shank rated it 5 of 5 stars

http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.20/dealt...

Dealt a bad hand: A review of Doc
REVIEW - From the High Country News November 28, 2011 issue
By Jenny Shank

Doc
Mary Doria Russell
394 pages, hardcover: $26.
Random House, 2011.

Versatile novelist Mary Doria Rusell's captivating reimagining of the life of Doc Holliday ends before the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral, that eternal wellspring for Western novels and movies. In her new book, Doc, Russell sees Holliday as more than a gambler and gunslinger, opening t...more http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.20/dealt...

Dealt a bad hand: A review of Doc
REVIEW - From the High Country News November 28, 2011 issue
By Jenny Shank

Doc
Mary Doria Russell
394 pages, hardcover: $26.
Random House, 2011.

Versatile novelist Mary Doria Rusell's captivating reimagining of the life of Doc Holliday ends before the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral, that eternal wellspring for Western novels and movies. In her new book, Doc, Russell sees Holliday as more than a gambler and gunslinger, opening the novel with a dismissal of "the journalists of his day" who seized on the last few years of his life story and "embellished slim fact with fat rumor and rank fiction." Instead, she introduces us to a refined, educated Southern gentleman and skilled dentist whose path through life is distorted by his worsening tuberculosis.

Born in Georgia in 1851, Holliday earned his degree in dental surgery at 21, only to discover that he'd developed the same disease that killed his mother when he was 15. Forced to leave his beloved Georgia for a drier climate, Holliday moves to Texas, where he meets the woman who becomes his longtime lover, Kate Harony. In Russell's telling, she is the orphaned daughter of a Hungarian physician, "raised at the imperial court of Maximilian of Mexico" -- an educated firebrand who speaks Latin and French and works intermittently as a prostitute. Holliday describes her life as "a fairytale in reverse," not unlike his own illness-forced exile from the kind of privileged family that, as Russell notes in her afterword, helped inspire the magnolia-scented O'Haras and Wilkeses in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind.

Harony convinces Holliday to move to rough-and-tumble Dodge City, Kan. (a community created with "a single purpose: to extract money from Texas"). In Dodge, Holliday works as a dentist when his health allows, and as a gambler when he's sick or business is slow. He's particularly sympathetic toward decent people forced to violate civilized norms to survive, especially prostitutes; as he tells his new friend, Wyatt Earp, "all these girls have some story." Russell suggests that Holliday's gambling and gunfighting are largely the adjustments he is forced to make due to his illness and the exigencies of life on the frontier.

Russell has fashioned an engrossing story out of the difficult hand Doc Holliday was dealt. In vigorous prose, and with great wit and fascinating historical detail, she conveys the distinct inner life of each of her flawed, endearing characters.

Jenny Shank is the author of The Ringer, which was a finalist for this year's Reading The West Award sponsored by the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association.(less)

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Nov 03, 2011 Zeke rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 5stars, favorites, west, fiction

Want just an overall great read?
I LOVED this book. Went into it with very little interest in Doc Holiday or Wyatt Earp. Just wanted an enjoyable read and boy, did I get it. Russell knows how to spin a great yarn and her characters nearly walk off the page. They're still with me. I wish I could have known them, had a drink with them.

Like your historical fiction to be at least somewhat accurate?
This book was scrupulously researched. This book gives a better sense of the "wild" West than any nonfic...more

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Apr 27, 2013 Tad Richards rated it 4 of 5 stars

Got better and better as it went along. I ended up loving it. Probably about 85 percent real history, presented as a novel, but a sort of metatiction, with the author stepping beyond the fourth wall to talk to about the characters and their place in history,

I've written a novel -- Tempest of Tombstone -- about these characters -- the Earps, Kate Elder, Doc Holliday -- in Tombstone, and I did a lot of research for that -- nothing like the incredible research Russell has done -- but I knew very li...more

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Mar 02, 2013 Steve Lindahl rated it 5 of 5 stars

Mary Doria Russell's novel Doc takes its readers back to Dodge City, Kansas in the mid nineteenth century. It's a period I've heard about, of course, but mostly through poorly researched films and old television shows. This book has a hard feel to it that makes it different. It feels as if this is closer to the way life really was in that time and place.

John Henry “Doc” Holliday is the main character. He was raised in a wealthy Georgian family prior to the civil war (or antebellum as he likes to...more

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Jan 10, 2013 Christy Birdsong rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm a sucker for stories about the western frontier and outlaws, but I am not familiar with the details of Wyatt Earp's story. This book is a well-researched but fictional account of the people that participated in the shootout at the OK Corral, and the events that led up to that fateful day.

Doc is Dr. John Holliday, a refined southerner and dentist by trade who finds himself in the wild (mid)west of Kansas, where the climate was supposedly beneficial to his tuberculosis. He is soon gambling, d...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Kathy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: library-book-club, historical-fiction

3.5 When our book club leader suggested we read this book because it was available as a kit with copies for everyone, I first thought it was about "Doc" on the TV series Gunsmoke. Not far off. It is John Henry Holliday, D.D.S., a contemporary of the Earps and Bat Masterson and of OK Corral fame. I loved those western lawmen on 50s & 60s TV so I enjoyed this journey down memory lane. The book is historical fiction and I look forward to reading more from the pen of Mary Doria Russell, even the...more

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Nov 30, 2012 Helen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Before reading Doc by Mary Doria Russell, the only thing I knew about the famous Doc Holiday was that he looked remarkably like Val Kilmer and often suggested his peers might be Daisies. What a delight to read about this fascinating and complex gentleman.

Russell tells Doc’s story from the very beginning; John Henry Holiday’s birth. His hold on life was tenuous from the start, as he was born with a hare-lip. Only because his uncle was a skilled surgeon, who performed the cutting-edge surgery, did...more

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Nov 03, 2012 Patricia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Mary Doria Russell is one of my favorite authors because she tackles large topics fearlessly, humorously and with great compassion. I first read her many years ago in a novel called Children Of God; you can read it stand-alone as I did, but I should have read The Sparrow, which preceded it. That one is about the Jesuits who take the Gospel into outer space, and has some laugh-out-loud moments in the midst of utter hopelessness. Yes. She's that kind of author, my kind of woman.

Here is the ending...more Mary Doria Russell is one of my favorite authors because she tackles large topics fearlessly, humorously and with great compassion. I first read her many years ago in a novel called Children Of God; you can read it stand-alone as I did, but I should have read The Sparrow, which preceded it. That one is about the Jesuits who take the Gospel into outer space, and has some laugh-out-loud moments in the midst of utter hopelessness. Yes. She's that kind of author, my kind of woman.

Here is the ending Question and Answer from an interview at the back of Doc, an interview with John Connelly:

Q: Authors are often asked what advice they'd give young writers. I would like to ask you a similar question: What do you think the worst advice a young writer could get is?

Mary Doria Russell: Major in English. Join a writer's group. Blog.

My advice is to major in and do something REAL. Have an actual 3-D life of your own. And please, shut up about it until you've got something genuinely wise or useful or thoughtful to share. Then again, I'm a cranky old lady! What the hell do I know?

Reading a book about legendary heroes of the Old West is not something I looked forward to, so the book languished on my "to read" pile until one day I picked it up just because it is written by Mary Doria Russell, and because she has knocked my socks off with every book I've read by her.

It starts off slow, summing up the early genteel years of John Henry Holliday in Georgia, just prior to, during and after the War Between the States. At 22 he is diagnosed with acute tuberculosis, and is advised that a drier climate out West might provide him with a more comfortable life, as short as it was likely to be. He had trained as a dentist, so he had a skill. Times were hard, and while he was a very very good dentist, it was a good thing he also had skills with card playing, to supplement his income when people didn't have the money to go to the dentist.

Don't skip over the early years, because what happens in the early years resonates into his years living in the West. The majority of the book takes place in Dodge, a border town where laws are made over a card game and by the men who will profit from them. Lives are hard, and short. While it is surely the wild west, the focus is on the relationships Doc builds - Wyatt and Morgan Earp (all the Earp brothers), Bat Masterson, the gals . . . here is where Russell's artistry shines; the cardboard figures begin to become real people. We start to like one or two, admire another, despise one more.

Here's what I love about Mary Doria Russell - without being at all preachy, she makes you stop and think about some of the values you hold most dear. Once you get west, 80% of the women featured in the book are prostitutes. Most of the characters drink heavily, and routinely use drugs which are today restricted to prescriptions. There is corruption, and murder, and arson, and abortion, and contraception, and adultery, and there is no one character who is purely good or purely evil, they are all complicated, just as we are. She can lead you to dislike a character, who at just the right moment knows just the right thing to say, and suddenly, you see that character differently, because another facet of his or her character has been revealed.

In the questions at the back of the book, we are asked if we were to meet Doc Holliday, would we like him? I had to ask the question the other way around - if I were to meet Doc Holliday, how would he perceive me? I found myself thinking outside the box, found myself thinking that if I knew my life were going to be very very short, would I want to hang around with normal people, dull, predictable people? Maybe people who look better on the outside than they are, or think more highly of themselves than they ought? Doc Holliday hung around with lawmen and gamblers and prostitutes and bartenders; his patients were law-abiding church-going citizens. Who gave greater color and meaning to his life? Who were more likely to be down-to-earth and practical and unpretentious?

There is an absolutely delightful segment about a Jesuit priest from an old Hungarian aristocratic family who finds himself riding out to visit all the small Catholic Indian parishes on a donkey, replacing a highly popular priest who is very sick; he is teased and mocked and treated with disrespect. One night, cold and wet, covered with dirt and filth in the desert, he has an epiphany that changes his life. Mary Doria Russell books have these luminous moments, worth reading the entire book for, and which will bring a smile of memory to your face long after you have finished reading the book. (less)

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Sep 30, 2012 Colin Birge rated it 4 of 5 stars

Before he was at the OK Corral, according to Mary Doria Russell, Doc Holliday was a gambler and sometime dentist in Dodge City, Kansas, already struggling with the tuberculosis that eventually would kill him. In Russell's account, there were a lot of not-yet-famous people in Dodge City at the time: the Earp brothers, Bat Masterson, Eddie Foy, and more.

Russell's book is a postmodern western of sorts, a catalogue of broken people and broken dreams on the frontier, but mostly it's a character study...more

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Sep 26, 2012 Regina Lindsey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Russell slowly unfolds the backgrounds of Doc Holliday, the Earp brothers, and the women in their lives, showing how their lives eventually intersect and what led to the decision to that fateful day in Tombstone, AZ, where their names would be forever immortalized.

All I can say is THANK YOU, THANK YOU, SHELFARI FRIENDS! I have resisted reading this because the Wild West has just simply never piqued my interest. What have I been missing?! Doc Holiday certainly has his reputation, and his wit shi...more Russell slowly unfolds the backgrounds of Doc Holliday, the Earp brothers, and the women in their lives, showing how their lives eventually intersect and what led to the decision to that fateful day in Tombstone, AZ, where their names would be forever immortalized.

All I can say is THANK YOU, THANK YOU, SHELFARI FRIENDS! I have resisted reading this because the Wild West has just simply never piqued my interest. What have I been missing?! Doc Holiday certainly has his reputation, and his wit shines throug. But Russell paints a complex and highly educated man, who often recites the Aeneid and Shakespeare at the drop of the hat and knows his classical musical, and who has the capacity for deep compassion for his fellow man. When Kate demands to know why Doc bothers with dentistry, he replies, "Kate...People die in misery for want of a dentist's care! I bother with all this because I can relieve sufferin'. I can improve lives. Sometimes I can even save them." I was incredibly impressed with his mother, who had to fight for his life early when Doc was born with a cleft palate. Her dedication didn’t stop with survival. Her dedication to his education is laudable. I couldn't help but wonder what she would have thought about the way his life turned out. There are great gems of trivia, such as the fact that Doc was the first to have surgery on his birth defect, throughout the book. Finally, it is just simply well-written, engaging, and funny. One of the my favorite quotes, "Mr. Darwin's proposal. ' The notion explains a great deal of natural history...but considerin' the presidency from George Washington to Rutherford B. Hayes, I believe we can dismiss the case for evolutionary progress.'"

My one complaint, and I’m wondering if there is an error in my Nook format because I just can’t imagine so much of this aspect was intentionally left out, is why didn't Russell follow the story to Tombstone? Did Russell really leave the gunfight of the story?! I felt like it ended suddenly before it was intended to and was a bit anticlimactic compared to the strength of the rest of the work. Please someone tell me if I’m missing pages.

I understand Russell is working on a follow up focused on Wyatt Earp. I will definitely rush out for it.

(less)

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Sep 12, 2012 Ms. Littell rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is the first western that I can remember reading. It stars Doc Holliday who is most known for the shootout in Tombstone with Wyatt Earp. This novel covers his early life with a focus on his time in Dodge City, Kansas with Maria Katarina Harony, a former Hungarian princess who now works as a prostitute. This is where he meets the Earp brothers and spends all of the money that he earns gambling while trying to run his dental office.

What I liked most about this book was the way that the reader...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Book Concierge rated it 5 of 5 stars

Audio book performed by Mark Bramhall

John Henry “Doc” Holliday was educated, a Southern gentleman, an accomplished pianist, a compassionate dentist, a gambler, and tubercular. Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Morgan and James, were the proof that sons raised by a bully will either follow in his footsteps or rebel by becoming champions of the downtrodden. These iconic figures of the American West are forever linked by the events of one afternoon in Tombstone Arizona. But this book introduces us to th...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Booknblues rated it 5 of 5 stars

There surely is an art to telling a good tale and it is clear that Mary Doria Russell has mastered it in her book Doc about the life of John Henry Holliday, also known as Doc Holliday. Russell has a friendly conversational tone to her writing that you might imagine from a favorite aunt or a close friend. She is able to impart meaning and see the best face of those around her without losing track of their faults. For her glimpse of her writing style here is the opening of the book, which may capt...more There surely is an art to telling a good tale and it is clear that Mary Doria Russell has mastered it in her book Doc about the life of John Henry Holliday, also known as Doc Holliday. Russell has a friendly conversational tone to her writing that you might imagine from a favorite aunt or a close friend. She is able to impart meaning and see the best face of those around her without losing track of their faults. For her glimpse of her writing style here is the opening of the book, which may capture you as it did me:

"He began to die when he was twenty-one, but tuberculosis is slow and sly and subtle. The disease took fifteen years to hollow out his lungs so completely they could no longer keep him alive. In all that time, he was allowed a single season of something like happiness.

When he arrived in Dodge City in 1878, Dr. John Henry Holliday was a frail twenty-six-tear-old dentist who wanted nothing grander than to practice his profession in a prosperous Kansas cow town. Hope_ cruelest of the evils that escaped Pandora's box _ smiled on him gently all that summer. While he lived in Dodge, the quiet life he yearned for seemed to lie within his grasp."

And so Mary Doria Russell walks us through John Henry Holliday's early life and into that magical summer in which hope sprang eternal. She deftly shapes the characters which populated that not so quiet cow town of Dodge City, 1878. We meet the Earps, James, Wyatt and Morgan, the dandified lawman, Bat Masterson, the ladies of the night, big nosed Kate, Bessie Bartlett Earp and Mattie Blaylock, and the merchants, Bob Wright, Ham Bell, Chalkie Beeson and Dog Kelly. We get a feel for the town with it's dust and it's dirt and raucus, noisy, shot-gun filled nights.

Mostly, Russell lets us peak into Doc Holliday's life and get a feel for the man himself with his hopes and dreams and the dreams which he has let go of but which haunt him still. I've read my share of westerns and indeed some about the the famous gunfight in Arizona and in it Holliday is always a one dimensional character without the depths and volume which Russell creates.

I loved this book and it left me wanting to read more of Russell's books and wanting to know more of the lives of Doc Holliday's land the Earps. I would recommend it highly.(less)

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About Mary Doria Russell

Mary Doria Russell is an American author. She was born in 1950 in the suburbs of Chicago. Her parents were both in the military; her father was a Marine Corps drill sergeant, and her mother was a Navy nurse.

She holds a Ph.D. in Paleoanthropology from the University of Michigan, and has also studied cultural anthropology at the University of Illinois, and social anthropology at Northeastern Univer...more

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“Every one of them has a story, and every story begins with a man who failed her. A husband who came home from the war, good for nothin' but drink. A father who didn't come home at all, or a stepfather who did. A brother who should have protected her. A beau who promised marriage and left when he got what he wanted, because he wouldn't marry a slut. If a girl like that has lost her way, it's-because some worthless no-account-sonofabitch left her in the wilderness alone!” — 6 people liked it

“I ain't movin' to Arizona! Dammit, there is nothin' there but gravel and scorpions.” — 3 people liked it

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