Here’s a tremendous piece of news: John Boessenecker will release a new biography of Joaquin Murrieta this year. He posted this:
Joaquin Murrieta is America’s most famous Latino outlaw. My new book, Bring Me the Head of Joaquin Murrieta, will be released this fall. It will be the first full length biography of the real Joaquin Murrieta, researched from 19th Century sources without the reams of fiction and myth that have been written about him.
Dig the caper:
The story of Joaquin Murietta is the stuff of legends—in the face of adversity, the Latino outlaw embarked on a noble career as a rebel, fighting against injustice. He later became popularly known as “El Patrio” (the Patriot) and the “Robin Hood of El Dorado.” However, though Joaquin Murietta remains a folk hero to many, his checkered past has been hidden behind layers upon layers of myth—until now.
Joaquin arrived in the gold mines in 1849, and his brother-in-law, Claudio Feliz, turned to crime, driven by far more sinister ambitions than righteousness. By the following year, Claudio Feliz and Joaquin Murrieta ruled over one of the biggest and bloodiest outlaw gangs of the Old West. Despite Murrieta’s grisly death, members of his gang continued to raid and kill for more than twenty years thereafter.
Bring Me the Head of Joaquin Murrieta tells the infamous story of Joaquin’s life, his bloody career and his gruesome fate. With careful research and never-before-told stories of the violent trail Murrieta and his gang left in their wake, award-winning author and definitive Wild West historian John Boessenecker separates fact from fiction in this gripping portrait of the California Gold Rush era…
Boessenecker is an ace historian, with a particular focus on the wild and woolly days of my old home state. California and Texas are the states that truly made the West wild, but California is often neglected when it comes to Western history. Boessenecker pretty much single-handedly fixed that. I consider his biography of Tiburcio Vasquez and his
He’s just as good outside California. His biography of Texas Ranger Frank Hamer and his Ride the Devil’s Herd: Wyatt Earp’s Epic Battle Against the West’s Biggest Outlaw Gang is a badass take on that oft-told tale.
As you can likely tell, I am quite stoked that he’s giving us what will surely be the definitive take on the life of the elusive and legendary outlaw.
And I’ll just take this opportunity to repost Dave Alvin:
Matthew says
I gave some of Boessenecker’s books away to used book stores recently. Not because I dislike them, but because I needed room. I have piles of books. I also hope some one will pick them up and discover something they did not know. (My local used bookstore has a large collection of Western history. That’s history of the American West.)
That said I am keeping the Hamer biography to the day I die, because it is an extraordinary story. Boessenecker is good at finding those.
David Wrolson says
With its California/Los Angeles focus-do you have any thoughts on Louis L’Amour’s “The Lonesome Gods?”
It has been decades since I read much L’Amour-but “The Lonesome Gods” is one that keeps coming up in my mind as being deeper than most and one that I should read again at this point in my life.
JimC says
Yeah, he went deeper with that one. LA was his home town by then, of course.
Quixotic Mainer says
The Californios and Mojave Crossing dive pretty deep on that region as well. Both are favorite Louis tales of mine.