“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 luminaries, such as the members of the James and Younger gang. Rather than romanticizing the violence of this integral period in American history, Wallis gives us insights into how it destroyed families and changed the trajectory of lives like Myra’s.

The political complexities of the formation of territories and states as America expanded, especially concerning Indigenous tribes, are also unpacked. The fortunes of Myra’s family were intimately tied to the development of Missouri, the Oklahoma Territory, and Texas and the fever-pitch precepts of Manifest Destiny. As a matter of fact, Myra was born within three days of the signing of the treaty that ended the Mexican-American War, which was a major victory for President Polk’s vision for (and execution of) Westward Expansion.

As you will read, these were barbarous, bloody times, full of grisly murders and equally grisly episodes of vigilante “justice.” It was the time of the Kansas–Missouri border wars, which blossomed in ever-greater bloodshed and atrocities during the Civil War with the rise of the Jayhawkers, Red Legs, and Bushwhackers and butchers like William Clarke Quantrill and “Bloody Bill” Anderson. One of the lesser known men who rode with Quantrill and Anderson, Simian Whitsett, is my wife’s ancestor. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Wallis had cited some of my father-in-law’s genealogy research.

Despite relentless atrocities, there was a growing sense of the value of education and the importance of proper manners, and Myra was one of the first students enrolled in the Carthage Female Academy. She then attended a school in Texas—promising developments for a peaceful, prosperous life. Unfortunately, the cessation of the South and the start of the U.S. Civil War proved highly disruptive to Myra’s plans, primarily because of her brother Bud’s taking up of the Southern cause. I’ll leave the details to the author, as Wallis’s writing is at its most evocative when it comes to their very close relationship and what it ultimately meant for the arc of her life.   

It was in the tumultuous years following the end of the Civil War that the misunderstandings and myths about Myra’s life began to form and grow. Wallis does a masterful job of extracting fact from fiction through exhaustive research and the presentation of official records whenever possible to lay to rest a plethora of incorrect statements about whom Myra married (starting with her tempestuous seven-year marriage to outlaw Jim Reed), when, and with whom she was more generally associated. The saying “you will be judged by the company you keep” is wholly instructive here, and Myra was far from innocent. It is ultimately a matter of degrees. She certainly could ride and shoot, and Myra had plenty of run-ins with the law, including a few indictments for horse theft, disorderly conduct, and arson. She both won and lost in court and spent some time in prison.

Those interested in how wild the West truly was will find the ensuing chapters to be highly engaging. Wallis shines a light on a cast of ornery horse thieves, bandits, and drunkards—including Cherokee outlaw Tom Starr and the James–Younger gang—to which no false facts need to be appended to make them larger than life and worthy of the Westerns that keep their names alive. These stories of deviance and derring-do are a master class in frontier justice, featuring Black US Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves and the “Hanging Judge” himself, Isaac Parker, out of Fort Smith, Arkansas. My wife’s maternal side of the family hails from there and I’ve visited the gallows. They are an extremely sobering sight, especially at twilight.

Those who believe that disinformation, fake news, yellow journalism, and sensationalism on the part of the news media are recent inventions should pay attention to the way the newspapers fabricated letters and interviews (and a woodcut and a photo, each worth a thousand suspect words) to build the myth of Belle Starr. Wallis offers us plenty of compelling educational material on how these deliberate, devious distortions worked—and, sadly, continue to.

As Myra’s marriages/intimate relationships and legal troubles mounted, her family life—including her relationship with her two children, Pearl and Eddie—suffered. Vicious accusations, prolonged estrangements, and outsized, unreasonable maternal pronouncements all contributed to the carnage. This, to me, is the tragedy of Myra’s life—a very human truth to counterbalance the “Wild Western Amazon,” as pushed by the papers.

Along with the maxim “you will be judged by the company you keep” is the equally applicable “live by the sword, die by the sword.” On February 3, 1889, Myra/Belle was murdered in the road. The chapter “Who Killed Belle Starr” pushes biography into open-ended murder mystery through Wallis’s storytelling largesse. I’ll leave the details to him.    

The book’s epilogue takes its title, “Print the Legend,” from one of my favorite Westerns, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It consists of snapshots of what happened to some of the secondary characters in the story. Take my advice: this isn’t incidental reading. Each of these people had a considerable effect on the trajectory of Myra’s life.

I mentioned exhaustive research. There are 85 pages of notes and bibliography. I also want to mention that I attended the book launch in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in early summer 2025. Several of Myra’s descendants were there and the amount of respect they showed for Michael Wallis and his mission to set the record straight was palpable and well deserved.

Although perhaps best known for his 2001 bestseller Route 66: The Mother Road, credited with reviving interest in this legendary highway, and voicing the Sheriff in Pixar’s Cars, Wallis is an accomplished and respected historian. Belle Starr is his twentieth book and arguably his best.