DEADWOOD, DAKOTA TERRITORIES, 1876: Legendary gunman Wild Bill Hickcock and his friend Charlie Utter have come to the Black Hills town of Deadwood fresh from Cheyenne, fleeing an ungrateful populace. Bill, aging and sick but still able to best any man in a fair gunfight, just wants to be left alone to drink and play cards. But in this town of played-out miners, bounty hunters, upstairs girls, Chinese immigrants, and various other entrepeneurs and miscreants, he finds himself pursued by a vicious sheriff, a perverse whore man bent on revenge, and a besotted Calamity Jane. Fueled by liquor, sex, and violence, this is the real wild west, unlike anything portrayed in the dime novels that first told its story.

Reviews

In 1876 William ``Wild Bill'' Cody and Charley Utter rode into Deadwood, a hellish frontier settlement in the Black Hills. Bill died there, victim of a possibly demented assassin. Fortunately, this is mostly the story of his constant companion, Charley, a man of sapient insight and, though less famous than his friend, of extensive and varied experience. Charley, Bill, their acquaintance the Bottle Fiend, and later Bill's widow Agnes and mourner Calamity Jane saw some remarkable things in Deadwood and raised considerable Cain. By turns heroic, ludicrous, vicious, pathetic, and infuriating, the exotic citizens of Deadwood grab the reader's interest immediately and never let go. Highly recommended for its deadpan, offbeat, credible frontier anarchy. Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army TRALINET Ctr., Fort Monroe, Va.

"If you want to call Deadwood a Western, you might as well call The House of Mirth chick lit. Dexter looked at the dark, twisted, ridiculous doings of Bill Hickok and company, said to himself, 'I recognize that!' and gave us a world-class entertainment." --Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections

"Unpredictable, hyperbolic and, page after page, uproarious; a joshing book written in high spirits and a raw appreciation of the past." --"The New York Times Book Review"

"Splendid. . . . Rumor put straight. . . . A carefully researched knitting of events into their most dazzling fabric." --"The Philadelphia Inquirer"

"Deadwood may well be the best western ever written." --"The Washington Post Book World"

"What deepens and darkens [Dexter's] writing, so that art is the precise word to describe it, is a powerful understanding that character rules, that we live with our weaknesses and die of our strengths." --"Time"

"Dexter is a master of colloquial poetry, of moods revealed through gestures and settings." -"-Playboy"

"One of the greatest American writers... a storyteller who cuts straight to the nerve." --Scott L. Turow

"Dexter's strongest suit is his exquisite understanding of the finely meshed engines of greed, appetite, and interest." --"The New York Times Book Review"

"Great, eccentric characters....Dexter's writing is a living thing." --"USA Today"