A riveting, deeply researched, blood-on-the-spurs biography of Belle Starr, the most legendary female outlaw of the American West.

On February 3, 1889, just two days shy of her forty-first birthday, Myra Maybelle Shirleybetter known at that point by her outlaw sobriquet Belle Starrwas blown from her horse saddle and killed by a pair of shotgun blasts, delivered by an unseen assailant, only a few miles away from her home in the Indian Territory of present-day Oklahoma. Thus ended the life of one of the most colorful, authentic, and dangerous women in the history of the American West.

While todays household names like Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane had dubious criminal bona fides, Belles were not in any doubt. She led a gang of horse thieves (a very serious crime in an era when horses were often the basis of ones livelihood); was romantically involved with two of the Wests most legendary outlaws, Cole Younger and Jim Reed (her first husband); and participated in stickups and robberies across present-day Texas and Oklahoma. When Reed was murdered, Belle crossed into Indian Territory, where she assimilated into the Cherokee tribe, a matrilineal society, and soon married Sam Starr, a direct descendant of Nanyehi, the greatest female warrior in Cherokee history.

Dane Huckelbridge, acclaimed author ofNo Beast So Fierce, probes a life rich in contradictions and intrigue. Why did a woman who had considerable advantages in lifea good family, a decent education, solid marriage prospects, a clear path to financial securitychoose to pursue a life of crime? The life of Belle Starr is one of almost endless trauma: the horrors of the Civil War, which destroyed her hometown and killed her beloved brother, Bud; the untimely deaths of her first two husbands, both of them murdered; a stint in Detroits notorious womens prison. Her career coincided with those of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and yet Belle Starr was a very different sort of feminist icon.

Queen of All Mayhemis a triumph of biography, revealing one of the most-mythologized figures of Western lore as she truly was.