Brothers of the Gun

Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone

By: Mark Lee Gardner

Narrated by: Bruce Boxleitner

A True West Magazine Best Book and Best Author of the Year

A colorful and groundbreaking account of the most storied friendship of the American West: the bond between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday

Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday: Legendary gunfighters and friends who gained immortality because of a thirty-second shootout near a livery stable called the O.K. Corral. Their friendship actually began three years before that iconic 1881 gunfight, in the rollicking cattle town of Dodge City. Wyatt, an assistant city marshal, was surrounded by armed, belligerent cowboys. Doc saw Wyatt’s predicament from a monte table in the Long Branch saloon and burst out the door with two leveled revolvers shouting, “Throw up your hands!” The startled cowboys did, and Wyatt and Doc led them off to jail. Wyatt credited Doc with saving his life, and thus began their lasting—and curious—friendship.

In this illuminating dual biography, the first about Earp and Holliday, the lives of these two men, one a sometime lawman and the other a sometime dentist, are chronicled in a swirling tableau of saloons, brothels, gambling dens, stage holdups, arrests, manhunts, and revenge killings. And while there’s plenty of gunsmoke in this saga, hero-worshipping won’t be found. Wyatt and Doc, just like anyone else then and now, had their flaws and failings, and the unsavory parts of their lives are here, too.

In Brothers of the Gun, Old West authority Mark Lee Gardner reveals fresh information about Wyatt’s and Doc’s early lives, their famous friendship, the O.K. Corral gunfight, and Wyatt’s controversial “vendetta ride” following the assassination of his brother Morgan. Drawing upon new research into diaries, letters, court records, and contemporary newspaper reports, as well as firsthand observation at several historic sites, this is the definitive book on Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and their enduring bond. Brothers of the Gun is edge-of-your-saddle nonfiction storytelling at its best.

Great book & narration

I very much enjoyed listening to this while hiking through NM on the CDT. Well researched.

Excellent narration. Boxleitner was a good choice.

Very detailed and historically accurate. New material I’d never known. Good job of telling background and motives is participants.

The reader

Liked the thoroughness of the character building and the comparison of the myth vs truth. The reader was well paced and easy to listen to. The author is known to me from earlier works and has maintained his status as a western biographer

So much Info!!!

It's amazing how the author was able to tell such a vivid story based on research and records. I enjoyed every minute of this book!

tombstone fan

ive always enjoyed stories of Doc and the Earps since I was very young and this was the best by far.