COLEMAN, Jane Candia 1939-

PERSONAL: Born January 9, 1939, in Pittsburgh, PA; daughter of Joseph Riccardo (a physical therapist) and Sophia (a schoolteacher; maiden name, Weyman) Candia; married Bernard D. Coleman, 1965 (divorced, 1989); married Glenn G. Boyer (a military officer and writer), 1991; children: (first marriage) David A., Daniel N. Education: University of Pittsburgh, B.A., 1960.

ADDRESSES: Home—P.O. Box 40, Rodeo, NM 88056. Agent—Crawford Literary Agency, Box 198, Evans Rd., Barnstead, NH 03218. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, technical writer for medical school, 1960-65; Carlow College, Pittsburgh, PA, cofounder and director of women's creative writing center, 1980-85; writer, 1985—.

MEMBER: WWA International Poetry Forum (board of directors, 1983—), Associated Writing Programs, Western Writers of America.

AWARDS, HONORS: Sewickley magazine, first prize for fiction; grant from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, 1986; Western Heritage Award, National Cowboy Hall of Fame for No Roof but Sky and Stories from Mesa Country; Western Writers of America Spur Award for I, Pearl Hart and Doc Holliday's Woman.

WRITINGS:

POETRY COLLECTIONS

No Roof but Sky: Poetry of the American West, High Plains Press (Glendo, WY), 1990.

Deep in His Heart J.R. Is Laughing at Us, Adastra Press (Easthampton, MA), 1991.

The Red Drum, High Plains Press (Glendo, WY), 1995.

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

Stories from Mesa Country, Ohio University Press/Swallow Press (Athens, OH), 1991.

Discovering Eve, Ohio University Press/Swallow Press (Athens, OH), 1993.

Moving On: Stories of the West, Five Star (Unity, ME), 1997.

Borderlands: Western Stories, Five Star (Unity, ME), 2000.

Wives and Lovers, Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2002.

Country Music: Western Stories, Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2002.

NOVELS; EXCEPT AS NOTED

Shadows in My Hands: A Southwestern Odyssey (nonfiction), Ohio University Press/Swallow Press (Athens, OH), 1993.

Doc Holliday's Woman, Warner Books (New York, NY), 1995.

I, Pearl Hart: A Western Story, Five Star (Unity, ME), 1998.

Doc Holliday's Gone: A Western Duo, Five Star (Unity, ME), 1999.

The O'Keefe Empire: A Western Story, Five Star (Unity, ME), 1999.

The Italian Quartet, Five Star (Unity, ME), 2001.

Desperate Acts, Five Star (Unity, ME), 2001.

Mountain Time: A Western Memoir (nonfiction), Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2001.

Lost River: A Western Story, Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2003.

Matchless: A Western Story, Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2003.

Contributor of stories to periodicals, including Pennsylvania Review, Agassiz Review, and South Dakota Review.

SIDELIGHTS: Jane Candia Coleman writes in many different genres. Her poetry and her short stories have won awards, and her novels are praised by a wide assortment of critics. Her writing is often set in the West, but she has told CA that she prefers to not be termed a "western" writer. "I also write about the East Coast, Europe, the arts, music, and so on," she added. She does, however, live on a ranch, trains and rides horses, and is "constantly learning about the West," about which she most often writes.

Although Coleman expresses her thoughts through a variety of forms, there is a theme that recurs throughout her writing. It is the lives and challenges of women, recreated through Coleman's creative genius but based on bits and pieces of truth that Coleman carefully researches. Coleman is, as Emil Franzi wrote in a review of Country Music for the Tucson Weekly, "one of the few people who writes about the West who actually went out and found those folks, and tells us what the women were doing when the boys were all down at the OK Corral." Therefore many of her books are referred to as biographical novels.

One such work is her Doc Holliday's Woman, which, like many of her other books, critics refer to as a story that the history books left out. This novel portrays the tale of Kate Elder, the orphan of European aristocratic parents and the mistress of legendary gunslinger Doc Holliday. In order to fully recreate the story, not only did Coleman carefully research Kate's life, she also rode her own horse over the long trail that Kate followed in her westward pursuit of independence. As part of Coleman's research she read Kate's diaries, which depict details of her long and often wild relationship with Holliday. The result, as reported by a reviewer for Publishers Weekly is a "fast moving yarn" that is "enlivened by crisp dialogue and an abundance of historical cameos and detail."

Another diary-based biographical novel is Coleman's The O'Keefe Empire. The story is set right before the turn of the twentieth century and covers the fine points of a cattle drive that started in New Mexico and ended in San Diego. The drive was a critically required enterprise of survival for protagonist Joanne O'Keefe, a twenty-four-year-old widow and recent recipient of a large cattle ranch in New Mexico. Franzi, for another review in the Tucson Weekly, wrote, "Coleman's writing makes you feel the gritty scut work of moving a herd of cattle 1,000 miles over bleak terrain." There was little fun to be had in a cattle drive, and Coleman makes that very clear.

I, Pearl Hart: A Western Story is yet another fictionalized biography. Hart was about as wild as the wild women of the West could be. She was a notorious thief and spent five years in the Yuma State Prison in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the first woman to do time there. It is through Pearl's story that Coleman attempts to revise the image of the women who helped shape the West. After reading this Western tale, Booklist reviewer Wes Lukowsky concluded that Coleman "carefully" recreated the life of Pearl Hart and found the result to be a "compelling first-person narrative." Lukowsky praised Coleman for exposing Hart, "not as a ruthless outlaw" but as a woman who did the best she could to survive.

Coleman has also published collections of short stories. One of these collections is Borderlands, in which Coleman continues to focus on the lives of women who lived in the newly developing West. The story "Wild Flower," for instance, is based on the letters of Louisa Earp, the wife of Western hero Wyatt Earp's brother. Louisa wrote the letters as she traveled from Deadwood, South Dakota, to Tombstone, Arizona, detailing the hardships along the way. "Borderlands makes it easy to see why Coleman's so respected by fans of Western writing," wrote Jim Carvalho for the Tucson Weekly. Library Journal contributor Jack Hafer found that this collection "is a solid and rewarding effort."

Wives and Lovers provides the reader with another collection of Coleman's short fiction. A Kirkus Reviews critic wrote that the characters in these stories are somewhat interchangeable, as they all are "symbols of women of extraordinary sensibility," who are either limited by the men they choose or find their escape through them. There are fourteen stories included in this collection that both celebrates and condemns the female-male relationship.

Coleman also writes poetry, and for an even more personal account of her world, Coleman has written the memoir Mountain Time in which she praises the natural environment that surrounds her New Mexico home.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 1, 1997, Wes Lukowsky, review of Moving On: Stories of the West, p. 925; February 1, 1998, Wes Lukowsky, review of I, Pearl Hart: A Western Story, p. 898; December 1, 1998, Budd Arthur, review of The O'Keefe Empire, p. 650; April 1, 1999, Melanie Duncan, review of Doc Holliday's Woman, p. 1391; November 1, 1999, Budd Arthur, review of Doc Holliday's Gone: A Western Duo, p. 507; February 15, 2001, Patty Engelmann, review of Desperate Acts, p. 1120.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2002, review of Wives and Lovers, p. 680.

Library Journal, September 15, 2000, Jack Hafer, review of Borderlands, p. 116.

Publishers Weekly, May 3, 1993, review of Discovering Eve, p. 295; August 30, 1993, review of Shadows in My Hands, p. 86; November 28, 1994, review of The Red Drum: Poetry of the American West, p. 55; April 3, 1995, review of Doc Holliday's Woman, p. 47; October 11, 1999, review of Doc Holliday's Gone, p. 53.

Women's Review of Books, July, 1993, Judith Grossman, review of Discovering Eve, pp. 38-39.

ONLINE

Tucson Weekly Online,http://www.weeklywire.com/ (August 17, 1998), Emil Franzi, review of I, Pearl Heart; (June 7, 1999), Emil Franzi, "Jane Candia Coleman Turns an Old-Fashioned Cattle Drive into High Adventure," review of The O'Keefe Empire; (August 9, 2001), Jim Carvalho, "Villa and Varmints," review of Borderlands; (July 25, 2002), Emil Franzi, "Jane Candia Coleman Introduces Us to Some Real Western Women," review of Country Music; (February 22, 2003), Emil Franzi, review of The Italian Quartet.*