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Nellie and Jackson Courtright are orphaned by their father's suicide on their hardscrabble ranch in the heart of No Man's Land in what will one day become Oklahoma. They cut him down from the barn rafters, bury him on the dusty plain and set off for the nearest town, Rita Blanca. With little to offer but several taverns, a magnificent jailhouse and a telegraph office, Rita Blanca becomes Nellie and Jackson's new home where they seek employment and housing on the muddy single street that leads through town.
Nellie, for all her youth, has plenty of brass and a fortuitous skill earned before her family headed west --- she can operate a telegraph key. As luck would have it, Rita Blanca just lost their last telegrapher, so despite misgivings of just about everybody, she gets the job. Jackson, too young and inexperienced to impress a future employer, is hired as a deputy sheriff. His job description is to sweep the cells and tend the horses, but he is catapulted into fame when a vicious gang rides into town. The sheriff is drunk, and Jackson, in an improbable stroke of luck, manages to kill all six marauders with eight shots, and a gun-fighting legend is born. Nellie writes a dime novel of the event that gains her fame and some fortune throughout her life.
Thus begins a fantastical journey with Nellie and Jackson as they move through the last of the western frontier, meeting the great gunslingers of all time. Nellie is generous with her affections, but not her love. Her heart belongs to Buffalo Bill Cody, but her romantic encounters with other legends and near legends propel her into haylofts and mesquite bosques from Oklahoma to Tombstone to Hollywood. She meets Wild Bill Hickok, the Earp brothers and Billy the Kid, and Buffalo Bill's wife Lulu becomes a friend and confidant. Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate befriend Nellie in Tombstone, where she and Jackson arrive minutes before the Gunfight at the OK Corral breaks out.
TELEGRAPH DAYS is an odyssey through the last frontier resembling Forest Gump's encounters with historical events. Nellie, however, is bright, sassy and courageous --- with nary a box of chocolates to be found. This is McMurtry's bow to the great gunfighters, as LONESOME DOVE honored the cattle drives of the 1870s. McMurtry fans will welcome his 38th novel to their collection.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
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