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In the Shadow of Billy the Kid

Susan McSween and the Lincoln County War

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In the Shadow of Billy the Kid

By: Kathleen P. Chamberlain
Narrated by: Karen Commins
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The events of July 19, 1878, marked the beginning of what became known as the Lincoln County War and catapulted Susan McSween and a young cowboy named Henry McCarty, alias Billy the Kid, into the history books. The so-called war, a fight for control of the mercantile economy of southeastern New Mexico, is one of the most documented conflicts in the history of the American West, but it is an event that up to now has been interpreted through the eyes of men.

As a woman in a man's story, Susan McSween has been all but ignored. This is the first book to place her in a larger context. Clearly, the Lincoln County War was not her finest hour, just her best known. For decades afterward, she ran a successful cattle ranch. She watched New Mexico modernize and become a state. And she lived to tell the tales of the anarchistic territorial period many times.

©2013 University of New Mexico Press (P)2013 Redwood Audiobooks
Americas State & Local United States Women Old West Wild West War Latin American Abraham Lincoln Mexico
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Critic reviews

“At last, we have a biography of Susan McSween -- survivor of the Lincoln County War... An excellent addition to the scholarship about the Lincolon County War and women in the American West.” (Cheryl J. Foote, author of Women of the New Mexico Frontier, 1846-1912)
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