The Honorable Cody

During his lifetime, Buffalo Bill Cody was the best-known person on earth. Dime novelists of the time had so embroidered his history that even Buffalo Bill himself couldn't keep it straight. His publicist John Burke thought he had invented Cody, but Buffalo Bill wasn't aware than anyone had invented him. He was simply himself all his life, and this was his main attraction. When the great showman died early in 1917, he continued to live on because his family, colleagues and rivals were certainly not done with him. Buffalo Bill had wished to be buried in Cody, Wyoming, but his wishes didn't count. His estranged widow Louisa thought she owned him. His sisters thought they should. Harry Tammen, the wily publisher of the Denver Post was certain he could snatch old Bill and he finally succeeded in making Cody's grave a top Denver tourist attraction, with the connivance of Louisa. So much for a famous man's wishes. In this warm and cheerful novel, Richard S. Wheeler lets Cody's heirs and friends and enemies duke it out, with an occasional dissent from a memoir left behind by the old showman. Standing above the turmoil is Cody himself, a towering, sweetly naive, earnest man whose scouting for the army was genuinely heroic, and whose Wild West was the most successful road show ever to tour America. When Buffalo Bill Cody died in 1917, he was the best-known person on earth. But the world wasn't done with him. In this richly wrought novel, Richard Wheeler depicts the struggle to commandeer his remains for commercial purposes.The owner of the Denver Post, Harry Tammen, wanted to bury him outside of Denver, as a tourist attraction. Cody wanted to be buried in his namesake town, Cody, Wyoming. His estranged wife Louisa had other ideas, and so did his sisters. So did Cody's friends. The result was a gaudy free-for-all, in which Tammen prevailed, and the old scout was finally buried on Lookout Mountain, outside of Denver.The author gives us a telling look at the sycophants and connivers who surrounded the showman. He paints a tender portrait of the old man, who was besieged by a lot of people with a lot of schemes. Cody had many friends, including Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull, who remembered the old man fondly, and these people, too, have their say in this penetrating and...