“A Fascinating Story without the Lies”: A Review of Belle Starr: The Truth Behind the Wild West Legend, by Michael Wallis
(New York: Liveright Publishing, 2025). ISBN: 978-1-63149-477-2 Ever since her adventurous life and tragic murder by an unknown assailant on February 3, 1889, Myra Shirley (aka Belle Starr, the “Bandit Queen”) has occupied a central position in the pantheon of Wild West Outlaws—bloodthirsty, larger than life; hero to some, villain to others. The problem in Myra’s case is that most of what we have been told by the press, the entertainment industry, and a slew of biographers is somewhere between exaggeration and lies. Michael Wallis made it his mission to remedy this injustice as only this celebrated historian and author can. Belle Starr is several books in one… part biography, part multifamily genealogy, and part exploration of the sociopolitical landscape of America in the mid- to late 1800s, with impressive explications of the early history of Missouri, the US Civil War, the free and slave state border feuds, and the mythologies and realities of other Old West lumin...