Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the American West
Author and historian Michael Rutter profiles twenty-one of these pistol-packing women. Meet Kate Bender, who brutally murdered as many as thirty people in Kansas, including children, and buried them in her family's orchard; Laura Bullion, the only woman to participate in a Wild Bunch train robbery; and Madam Vestal, a one-time Confederate spy who organized the famous Deadwood stagecoach robberies. Witness the execution of Elizabeth Potts and Ellen Watson, the first women hanged in Nevada and Wyoming.
Drawing on fact and folklore, Rutter brings these gun-slinging "bad girls" to life - and explores their motives, hopes and dreams. He dispels many of the myths about these female outlaws, for sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Featuring forty-two historical images, Bedside Book of Bad Girls sheds light on figures and events often shrouded in fabrication and fantasy. Meet these fascinating characters, complete with their pistols and petticoats, their knives and knaves, their vices and victims.
