Belle Starr

Truth and Fiction

Once upon a time I was contracted by a New York publisher to write a romance novel with Belle Starr as the protagonist. They wanted it to be as close to fact as possible. I knew it would be a tall order, but it also would be my first hardback novel, so I agreed.

For those who aren't familiar with Belle, she was known as "The Outlaw Queen" and she was no beauty.  I imagine in her early years, she was pretty, but her life was rough and it showed on her face. I knew I would have to "pretty her up" to make her a romance heroine. Many of the men in her life were also not attractive, so I had my work cut out for me!

I started researching her and discovered that many sources I thought would deal in facts didn't. As I dived deeper and deeper, I found make discrepancies and outright lies. This was a good early lesson for me not to trust everything I read, even if it came from a supposedly reliable source. Of course, as a former journalist, I knew about shady sources and crafty canards. Still, I was surprised to see misinformation in encyclopedias and university press books.

Little by little, I pieced together what seemed to be truth concerning Belle and her lawless ways and determined where I would embellish it. Since there has always been rumors that Belle had an affair with Cole Younger (and might have even bore him a daughter), I went with that as the central love story in my romance. The men she married weren't romance material, no matter how much I tried to make them so. I finally gave up and romanticized Younger and the James brothers (as in Jesse James, the outlaw). 

What I gathered from my research was that Belle wasn't all that lawless. She ran around with bad men -- men who resented the outcome of the Civil War, as did she. Bitter and angry, they felt justified in sticking it to the Yankees by robbing their trains and banks and stealing their horses and cattle. Belle's primary activity was stealing horses and she went to prison for it. Researching those years made me see Belle in a new light -- that of a loving mother. She wrote to her children while in prison, but didn't want them to visit her because she was ashamed. When she was released from prison, she tried to stay on the straight and narrow, but she was blamed for many misdeeds. She had a reputation as an outlaw and she could never shake it. In fact, she was murdered and her murderer was never identified.

This book was the most difficult book I've ever written and I've never been pleased with it. After a couple of rewrites, I finally had something both my editor and I could live with, but I don't think either of us loved the novel. I know I didn't.

The moral of this story is that you can't make a silk purse out a sow's ear. Belle was a colorful character, but she wasn't a romance heroine. You need only look at her real photo and the cover of my novel and see what I mean. Still and all, I had a hardback novel with my name on it, so that was something. I also purchased the original oil painting of the cover and have it hanging in my house. Thanks, Belle.