The elusive, colorful story of a rare outlaw, told with brio.
The most notorious of America’s female outlaws.
Journalist and author Huckelbridge has conjured up one heck of a Wild West tale about a “whiskey-drinking, horse-thieving, gunslinging double widow” that is chock-full of Western lore and nasty desperadoes. Myra Maybelle Shirley, aka Belle Starr, was born in 1848 near Carthage, Missouri, around horses and guns, was educated, and could play the piano. Huckelbridge conjectures—something he does frequently—that Myra “likely” became a Confederate spy. Her brother Bud, a Confederate soldier, was killed, traumatizing the 16-year-old and transforming her into an “outlaw.” The family then moved to the true frontier: Texas. “It was during these two powder-burnt decades,” writes Huckelbridge, “that the legend of Belle Starr would take root, nourished by that almost mystic Western triad of what would prove to be the woman’s three greatest passions: horses, outlaws, and the Indian Territories.” In 1866, at 18, she married the criminal Jim Reed, and they moved to Missouri, where they had a daughter and a son. After Reed was killed, she joined a violent Cherokee “galloping nightmare” clan full of killers and in 1880 married another ruthless criminal, Sam Starr. Her new name “twanged like a bullet off spit-shine brass: Belle Starr.” The Cherokee gave Sam some land, which they used as a robber’s roost for trafficked horses, protection rackets, and whiskey smuggling. They were arrested for horse stealing and locked up. She dodged other arrests. Sam was killed in a gunfight. Another marriage provided protection for her Indian land. At 40, riding her horse sidesaddle early one evening in 1889, Belle was shotgunned twice, dying in her daughter’s arms. Huckelbridge explores many “what-ifs,” but her killing remains a mystery.
The elusive, colorful story of a rare outlaw, told with brio.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780063307018
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.
Remembering “Hershy.”
Three hundred and twenty-eight days. That’s how long Hersh Goldberg-Polin was held in captivity—tortured and starved by his captors in underground tunnels—before he was executed. He was 23 years old. In this unvarnished and heartrending account, Goldberg-Polin’s mother, Rachel, writes of the unending torment that she and her husband, Jon, endured after learning that their son had been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the attacks of October 7, 2023. Like so many other young people on that day, Hersh was attending a music festival in Israel—a celebration of love and unity. As Goldberg-Polin writes, her son was “the only American citizen kidnapped alive on October 7th who did not return alive.” In direct, plainspoken language that steers clear of politics, the author, a Jewish educator, recounts “being in a daze of the most indescribably sickening horror and fear, like nothing I had ever felt in my life. I remember my heart racing and feeling like I was in a permanent state of someone scaring me.” In addition to “shovel[ing] out my pain in the form of words,” she shares reminiscences of her son, as well as details that only a parent could notice. “His eyes were cookies,” she says of her “Hershy.” “I couldn’t find the pupils within the dark chocolate-brown irises.…He had a raspy voice, even when he was a baby.” And: “I thought he was hilarious; his sarcasm and humor were similar to mine.” Hersh and his sisters, Leebie and Orly, adapted well to life in Israel after the family moved from Richmond, Virginia. (Hersh was born in the Bay Area.) After being discharged from his service in the Israeli army as a combat medic, he was planning to journey around the world—a longtime dream of his. “So many people have come to love you, Hersh,” Jon Polin writes in the book’s afterword. And with one simple word that has the power to touch any heart, he signs off: “Dada.”
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798217198009
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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