Starr Tracks: Belle and Pearl Starr
FAMOUS AS THE "BANDIT QUEEN" of the old West, Belle Starr was a proud and hot-tempered woman who wore six-guns over her velvet skirts and associated with the notorious Younger brothers. Her daughter Pearl Starr operated bordellos in Arkansas, and achieved almost every ambition--except the respectability she craved. Guided by recently discovered papers and family histories preserved by descendants of the Starrs, author Phillip Steele looks behind the myths to reconstruct the true story of two of the most colorful characters in America's old West. The work describes how sensation-hungry newspapers created the myth of Belle Starr as the "Bandit Queen." He also gives an account of Belle's actual career, including Pearl's epic struggle with her mother to keep her illegitimate daughter, and examines the mystery of who shot Belle Starr. Phillip W. Steele is a writer, historian, the author of Jesse and Frank James: The Family History, The Last Cherokee Warriors, Ozark Tales and Superstitions, The Many Faces of Jesse James, and Outlaws and Gunfighters of the Old West, and the coauthor of Civil War in the Ozarks.