Deanne Stillman is a widely published, critically acclaimed writer. Her books include Blood Brothers, Desert Reckoning (winner of the Spur and LA Press Club Awards for nonfiction), and Mustang, a Los Angeles Times best book of the year. In addition, she wrote the cult classic, Twentynine Palms, a Los Angeles Times bestseller that Hunter Thompson called A strange and brilliant story by an important American writer. She writes the Letter from the West column for the Los Angeles Review of Books and is a member of the core faculty at the UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA Low Residency Creative Writing Program.
Intriguing. . . . Blood Brothers brings Buffalo Bill wonderfully to life. -- Barbara Spindel * Christian Science Monitor * Thoroughly researched, Stillman's account of this period in American history is elucidating as well as entertaining. * Booklist * A compelling narrative that reads like a novel. -- Cynthia Romanowski * Orange County Register * The lives of two of the most iconic figures in American history intersect in a sad but fitting setting -- a traveling Wild West show that gave both Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull second lives after their frontier days had ended. Deanne Stillman authentically recreates the lives and times of the killer of buffalo and the `killer of Custer' who joined forces as popular entertainers. -- Tom Clavin, coauthor of The Heart of Everything That Is One of True West's Best Biographies of the Year * True West * Blood Brothers is a story of sorrow and triumph - the sorrow of Sitting Bull's murder in 1890 and the triumph, barely understood at the time, of Buffalo Bill Cody's central role in preserving the robust culture of the Lakota and Cheyenne people whom Sitting Bull had led in war. Deanne Stillman tells the dramatic story of these two men - enemies first, then showmen, and friends at the last. -- Thomas Powers, author of The Killing of Crazy Horse Stillman gives an account of the tragic murder of Sitting Bull that's as good as any in the literature. . . . Thoughtful and thoroughly well-told-just the right treatment for a subject about which many books have been written before, few so successfully. * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *