THE REIGN OF SOAPY SMITH

A lively and virile biography of one of the men who helped build the fiction of the ""wild and woolly west"" and who actually lived in the '80's and '90's in Denver and in various mining camps, where he won fame as gambler, confidence man, promoter, and leader of a gang of thieves. Enormous research has gone into building a brilliantly realistic background; gold camps come into being; the west takes form as you read. Famous characters from boom town history cross the pages. The Klondike gold rush offers a chance to change a kingdom for an empire, and Soapy seized and made the most of it until irate citizens took matters into their hands, and he fell the victim of a Vigilante's bullet. Good ""escape reading"" and should be easy to sell and good rental library item for men readers.