She is the author of the documentary film In Search of Doc Holliday, and the award-winning historical novel trilogy The Saga of Doc Holliday for which she twice received Georgia Author of the Year honors and in 2016 was named Best Historical Western Novelist by True West Magazine. Her work with the museum led to two decades of original research, making her a nationally recognized authority on the life of Doc Holliday. Victoria Wilcox is Founding Director of Georgia’s Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House Museum (the antebellum home of the family of Doc Holliday, now a site on the National Register of Historic Places), where she learned the family’s untold stories of their legendary cousin. And with luck, he’ll have one last chance to prove himself as the Southern gentleman he was raised to be.ĭead Man’s Hand is the final book in the award-winning Saga of Doc Holliday, an epic American tale of heroes and villains, dreams lost and found, families broken and reconciled, of sin and recompense and the redeeming power of love. He can never return to the life he once knew, and as the mountain altitude and illness take their toll, he is forced to turn to the one person he thought he’d never see again. The aftermath brings retribution and a reckoning that sends John Henry and his friend Wyatt Earp fleeing for their lives, but a hoped-for sanctuary in Colorado is broken by legal battles that attract national newspaper coverage and hired guns hoping for a moment of fame against the infamous Doc Holliday. When suspicions rise and tempers ignite, the plot turns into a war between cowboys and lawmen, and he becomes a player in the most famous street fight in the Wild West. The most famous of these was the Gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881.ĭoc Holliday met his eventual fate, somehow managing to cheat death until then, and died peacefully from consumption in 1887.You’ve heard Doc Holliday’s history, but do you know his story?ĭead Man’s Hand brings John Henry Holliday to Tombstone, Arizona, the richest silver boomtown in the country, where he’s caught up in a secretive plot to stop a gang of cattle rustlers and stage robbers before they start a threatened war with Mexico. Holliday became involved with only eight shootouts in his life, despite his reputation. Wyatt, chasing a felon named Rudabaugh, came to Holliday for information. Later, he would return, only to meet “Big Nose” Kate, a prostitute, and Wyatt Earp, US Deputy Marshal in acting commission. Doc, knowing his fate would be horrible should he be caught, fled. This was swiftly followed by an investigation. In 1876, Doc got in another fight and killed a soldier. On January 2, 1875, Doc got into a fight with a saloonkeeper. He began gambling, but realized that this profession was unstable, so made sure he had protection for himself: a six-shooter and a knife. After the disease rendered Doc unable to work, he had to find a new means of earning his keep. Searching for acceptance in the community, John followed in the footsteps of his well-received cousin Robert Holliday, who founded the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, and sought his DDS.ĭoc soon discovered that he had contracted consumption – also known as tuberculosis – from his mother before she died doctors advised him that he could extend his lifespan somewhat in a drier climate, so he headed to Dallas. His mother died when he was fifteen, and his father remarried three months later. The family moved to Georgia, where John studied languages. He grew up with his two parents and an adopted orphaned Mexican boy named Francisco Hidalgo. Doc Holliday was born to Alice and Major Henry Holliday on August 14, 1851.
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