Review: Etta by Gerald Kolpan (TSS)
Etta: A Novel
by Gerald Kolpan
The life of beautiful, elegant Etta Place has long been a mystery to scholars of America’s Wild West. She was the lover of Harry Longabaugh, best known in pop culture as the Sundance Kid, and accompanied him on many of his adventures. After he and Butch Cassidy were killed in 1908, Etta disappears from the historical record. Theories abound as to who she was and where she went after his death, but nothing conclusive has ever been found.
In Gerald Kolpan’s first historical fiction novel, Etta Place is forced to flee her luxurious home after her father’s death brings the Black Hand mafia to collect his gambling debts. She is soon across the country in Colorado, serving travelers of the railroads meals with the graceful smile of a perfect “Harvey Girl.” But violence seems to follow Etta wherever she goes, and after defending herself against the unwanted advances of an amorous customer, Etta is once again on the run - this time in the company of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch. She meets the great love of her life, participates in the Wild Bunch’s train robberies, and quickly becomes as notorious as the rest of the gang. Constantly on the move in a variety of disguises and personas, Etta meets and befriends many of the celebrities of her age, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Buffalo Bill and Leon Trotsky.
Kolpan tells his story through a multitude of media, including diary entries, letters, newspaper articles interwoven with straightforward narrative. I enjoyed the story immensely; Etta is vivacious and brave, able to adapt to almost every situation. That said, the plot stretches credulity again and again. That Etta was a rich girl fleeing her home is reasonable; she was known for her beauty, manners and meticulous dress and such refinement would have required some money to cultivate. But Etta also befriends Eleanor Roosevelt, who saves her from trouble with her family’s influence, and for a time impersonates Annie Oakley in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. It’s a definite stretch. I could see any of these things working well as a plot device in separate novels, but thrown together in the same story it’s almost too much. But the beauty of historical fiction is the author is not bound by the biographer’s “and this is what did happen.” As long as he or she can say “this is what may have happened” or “we cannot prove that this did not happen,” history can be pinched, pulled and shaped to whatever the storyteller desires. So cast aside your desire for history and have fun with this entertaining tall tale of the Wild West.
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