Cattle Kate

Starred review from September 22, 2014
In her outstanding first novel, a historical mystery, journalist Bommersbach (The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd) resurrects the name and reputation of real-life Ellen "Ella" Watson, who was lynched for allegedly rustling cattle in the Wyoming Territory on July 20, 1889. Watson was born out of wedlock in 1860 in Ontario, Canada, to a 15-year-old Irish mother, Frances, and her Scottish lover, Thomas. Her parents married, and produced 16 more children, many of whom died young. In 1877, the family trekked to Kansas to homestead a new farm. Ella married and later divorced an abusive man, then in 1885 boldly struck out on her own for the Wyoming Territory. Hard work earned Ella a measure of success, first as a boardinghouse cook and waitress, later as the secret wife of postmaster Jimmy Averell, and finally as a homesteader with her own claim. But Ella made enemies of several big cattlemen, including rancher Albert J. Bothwell, who will lead her lynching. Bommersbach beautifully recreates the milieu in which Ella struggled to realize her dreams. Extensive endnotes provide further background on this miscarriage of justice.

October 15, 2014
In 1889, a few years before Wyoming's infamous Johnson County War, Ella Watson and her consort, James Averell, were lynched by vigilantes, supposedly for stealing cattle. Watson and Averell may have bent the law somewhat, herding mavericks onto their fenced land, but calling them rustlers, Bommersbach argues, is absurd. They were ambitious homesteaders who ran a popular general store and advocated for farmers against the cattle barons. Ella wasn't a prostitute, nor Averell a pimp. The two were husband and wife whose reputations were ruined by open-rangers in the powerful Wyoming Stock Growers Association. Bommersbach's full account of Watson's childhood on the Kansas prairie and first marriage to an abusive man is sure to elicit the reader's sympathy, and fictional portraits of frontier women are still rare. But the myths surrounding Watson and Averell have already been corrected, so Bommersbach's outrage over historical injustice fails to convince. Her colorful realism will reach a large audience, however, and also corrects the silliness of Kris Kristofferson playing Averell and Isabelle Huppert playing Watson in the famously bloated Hollywood production Heaven's Gate (1980).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)