The Honorable Cody

By Richard S. Wheeler

When Buffalo Bill Cody died in 1917, he was the best-known person on earth. But the world wasn't done with him. In this richly wrought novel, Richard Wheeler depicts the struggle to commandeer his remains for commercial purposes.The owner of the Denver Post, Harry Tammen, wanted to bury him outside of Denver, as a tourist attraction. Cody wanted to be buried in his namesake town, Cody, Wyoming. His estranged wife Louisa had other ideas, and so did his sisters. So did Cody's friends. The result was a gaudy free-for-all, in which Tammen prevailed, and the old scout was finally buried on Lookout Mountain, outside of Denver.

The author gives us a telling look at the sycophants and connivers who surrounded the showman. He paints a tender portrait of the old man, who was besieged by a lot of people with a lot of schemes. Cody had many friends, including Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull, who remembered the old man fondly, and these people, too, have their say in this penetrating and sometimes comic novel. And in the end, Buffalo Bill emerges as a hero, a man better than many of those who surrounded him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard S. Wheeler
• Release date: Mar 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311151049

Richard S. Wheeler

Richard S. Wheeler is the award-winning author of historical novels, biographical novels, and Westerns. He began his writing career at age fifty, and by seventy-five he had written more than sixty novels. He began life as a newsman and later became a book editor, but he turned to fiction full time in 1987. Wheeler started by writing traditional Westerns but soon was writing large-scale historical novels and then biographical novels. In recent years he has been writing mysteries as well, some under the pseudonym Axel Brand. He has won six Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America and the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in the literature of the American West.

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