WYATT & THE DUKE brings to vivid life one of Hollywood's most enduring legends, that an aging Wyatt Earp was the real-life mentor to a promising young Western star named Marion Morrison.
Hollywood, 1927. The frontier is officially closed. But the West isn’t finished yet—it’s just moved onto a soundstage.
Wyatt & the Duke is an art deco western, set at the volatile birth of the modern movie industry, when silent films are giving way to talkies and legends of the Old West are being repurposed for entertainment and rewritten along the way.
It is The End of the West and The Beginning of the Western.
Marion Morrison (later known as John Wayne) is young, hungry, and trying to find his place in a town where illusion matters more than truth.
Wyatt Earp is the real deal.
Now, 79, he was once a genuine western legend, but now finds himself reduced to a relic—telling stories of the old days, hired for authenticity, sidelined, and tolerated for what he can bring to a world of make believe.
When his path crosses with young Morrison's on a 1927 movie lot, what begins as professional necessity becomes something far deeper: a mentorship forged between two men standing on opposite sides of history. When a member of the cast is murdered, these two heroes, one young and one old, join forces to set things right, Western style.
Wyatt & the Duke marks a final heroic adventure for Earp and the first of many adventures for the young Duke in a novel of historical fiction that will make you believe it really happened or, at the very least, it damn well should have.
Wyatt & the Duke blends:
The danger of the Old West
The glamour, ambition, and artifice of early Hollywood
The sharp lines and moral contrasts of the Art Deco era when Western outlaws give way to gangsters in an all-too real battle of life and death.
This is a Western where horses share space with kleig lights, and gunfighters pretend to die in a world run by directors and studios.
A very human story of Friendship Across Generations
About legacy and the invention of a new movie star
About what is lost when progress moves too fast
About the unlikely friendship between a young man becoming someone of value and an old man struggling to remain relevant
As Duke learns what it truly means to stand for something, Wyatt confronts the final reckoning of a life built on violence, honor, and myth.
For Readers Who Love:
Westerns with a fresh edge
Old Hollywood and the golden age of cinema
Character-driven stories about mentorship and legacy
Novels that blur the line between myth and reality in a historical fiction that is so close to being real, you'll forget it's a novel.
FROM THE ACCLAIMED SCREENWRITER OF "TEARS OF THE SUN" AND OTHER FEATURE FILMS.
"One of Our Five Favorite Western Novels," TheHardWord.OrgIt's 1927, perhaps the most exciting year in the nation's history. Hollywood is buzzing when heralded director William Desmond has a wild idea. He casts a young stuntman, Marion Morrison, to play Wyatt Earp in the studio's first-ever talking picture. The movie is based on the true-to-life exploits of the Western legend himself. The stakes couldn't be higher. To ensure the 19-year-old turns in an authentic performance, Desmond hires the real Wyatt Earp (now 79) to mentor him.
That's just the beginning of an unpredictable adventure that is a tour de force tale of Los Angeles in the 1920s, movie-making, romance, organized crime, murder, the quest for ultimate revenge.
"I highly recommend "Wyatt and The Duke." It's a great read, well-written, and entertaining from beginning to end. My Stetson's off to author Patrick Cirillo." -- Amazon Reviewer
