Reckon

Whatâs it like to have been born in Tombstone, Arizona? In Reckon, artist Logan Phillips returns to the fabled town to face the history he was raised on as a boyâ"gunfights, outlaws, and Hollywood cowboysâ"for a new, personal confrontation with the Westâs foundational mythology. This hybrid memoir also explores sexuality, masculinity, parenting, and what it means to love a land rife with contradiction and âslathered in murder.â As innovative as it is moving, this memoir is constructed of essays, photography, poetry, newspaper clippings from the Tombstone Epitaph Local Edition, and of course, movie screenplays. As he writes the characters of his pastâ"â"including Youngfather and Teenmeâ"â"Phillips finds the real history to be much more complex than the stories he was told. This is Tombstone in the 1980s and 90s, a century after the Westâs most famous gunfightâ"â"a fifteen-second event still performed every day in historical reenactmentsâ"â"where Phillipsâs father works as a historical exhibit designer at the Courthouse Museum and his uncle as a stuntman at Old Tucson Studios. With an original, searing voice, Reckon is an essential answer to the tough questions of past and future, inheritance and reinvention, all from the perspective of a boy stuck in the middle.