The Whip: A Novel Inspired by the Story of Charley Parkhurst

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Charley became a renowned stagecoach driver for Wells Fargo. She killed a famous outlaw, had a secret love affair, and lived with a housekeeper who, unaware of her true sex, fell in love with her. As a woman in the Old West, it was impossible to live your dreams – unless you were happy to be a wife, teacher (only if you could read) or prostitute. Knowing your own personal dreams—could you have survived as some women did, living part or all of your life as a man in exchange for the freedom that men had then? Could you have kept that secret and handled the loneliness and emotional isolation that that kind of life engendered? But the change of venue is nearly incidental to the epic and emotional power of the book. I was so moved by the conclusion that I wept.

The Whip” explores all the deep inner turmoil that Charley Parkhurst must have felt being a woman of her time and making a living for herself as a free man. Charlie had a hard life, starting as a baby in an orphanage. Sent to the stables as punishment, she develops a true affinity with the horses. This works to her advantage once she heads west, disguises herself as a man and gets a job as a whip for the Wells Fargo stage line.And speaking of tragedy, there is a lot of it in this book. During the first half of the book, I felt that the darkness was effective at engaging my emotions and empathy. But the second half, where the tension between Charley’s tragic past and the almost ebullient indulgence of her masculine identity creates some over-the-top melodrama, I felt like The Whip was drawing on a number of stereotypes of life in 19 th C America more than constructing a believable tale about a complex and provocatively fascinating character. Consequently, my experience of the book was mixed and while I’m glad I read it, I cannot recommend it without reservations. C+ Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. 1st Thus. Hardcover The Whip Hand blue Boards with Gilt Lettering.(We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc.). I just finished reading “The Whip” and I have to tell you how much I absolutely loved your book. My wife read it too and has recommended it to her book club. Other than Larry McMurtry, Brian Garfield and a few others, I rarely read fiction. I am a history buff. It’s a curse. But “The Whip” had me from the start. I believe what I liked best is your books honesty. It is not necessarily a western; it’s about a person that happened to exist in that time period. It’s about feelings, emotions, anger, confusion, and even hatred; But mostly about forgiveness. I love your style of writing. For me it holds a simple rhythm that makes it a friendly read. Thank you so much for Charley and sharing her wonderful adventure.

Martin Caidin was a prolific and controversial writer. Most of his work centered around the adventures of pilots and astronauts. A number of his books were notable for their reasonable, realistic predictions of then-futuristic technology. Our technical team have been informed of this error, and will be investigating but please do try again shortly. So when tragedy comes to the farm donning white sheets and masks, and fueled by racism and a personal anger that is definitely not brotherly, Charlotte heads out West to California, where she hopes she will find the master of her misery and exact well-deserved and long-overdue revenge. Instead what Charlotte finds is a new life as Charley Parkhurst, stagecoach driver and Sacramento resident. Although small and slim, Charley manages to pass as a man, although the parts of the narrative told from Charley’s point of view continue to use female pronouns, suggesting that Charley never thought of herself as male. Whether this was the case in real life is not clear, but for the purpose of the book, Charley’s dual identity is necessary because of the various relationships she has during the second half of her life, one of which is as a woman with a local gambler she periodically trysts with in San Francisco, and another as a man with an actress and her daughter who live with Charley as caretakers of a sort. I will not describe this section of the book in much more detail, because it is difficult not to venture into serious spoiler territory, but I will say that this was the most problematic part of the book for me.Robin Weigert is able to portray Charlotte as both a man and a woman with very slight changes in her voice. She clearly defines the interesting set of characters in Charlotte’s life with changes in pitch, tone, and regional accents. In addition to Charlotte’s inner struggles and gender switches, the story hints of other women in the Old West who could not be self-reliant, respected, and independent as females. This ambitious plot, well performed, is based on a true story. But while the whips certainly have a role as counsellors, the information they hold is their real secret weapon and where their power has always resided. Demands are now growing for them to reveal what they know. This book, inspired by the real life story of Charlie Parkhurst, reads like a novel, yet you can’t stop thinking that it could actually be Charlie’s story. Kondazian’s descriptive style makes the reader feel they are right in the center of the action. After finishing The Whip, I was left with a sense of loss that we will never really know the truth of Charlie’s story. But her story in The Whip is so real that I let myself be almost-convinced. I loved this book and read it in record time. Kondazian knows how to weave a great story and I do hope she finds another intriguing person to write about soon. I’ll definitely be recommending this one to all my reader friends. This is an authentic old west tale, complete with a lynching, stagecoach chases, gun fights, and more. It’s the story of a woman who is so successful at being a man, not only is she allowed to vote (oh, the horror – LOL!), but she successfully takes her secret to the grave – or so close that it doesn’t really matter. There are, admittedly, some liberties taken with her story, but more to flesh out the grey areas than to significantly alter or misrepresent anything about her. That’s an important distinction to make, because she is most definitely not your typical heroine. In fact, at times, she is downright nasty. Charley could sense Edmunds not only made love to Charlotte, but to Charley as well. The vision of Charley on the driver’s box, sweaty, dirty, whipping the six-team, powerful and brave as any man. She imagined it excited him to feel Charley beneath him or on top. As it excited her . . . the freedom to be a man and a woman in the same body – at the same time.

Karen Kondazian gave three of the most exciting performances I’ve seen in decades of LA theatre-going. Her Serafina in THE ROSE TATTOO revealed that play for me. Her Alexandra del Lago in SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH was terrifying, for her portraying of the ruthless hunger of Williams’ movie star for fame, youth, and beauty. And her Maria Callas in MASTER CLASS let me see that it was a great play; her earthiness and operatic grief trumped Zoe Caldwell’s, at least for me. A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact. S. G. (Samuel Groome),Fox, George Queries by another hand for New-England priests and elders to answer,Tyso, John. Copy of a letter which was delivered into the hands of R. Bellingham, late governour of Boston in New-England, for him to read and consider (1676)Charley disguises as a man and applies for a job as stagecoach driver for Wells Fargo. Extremely skilled at the whip and handling the team of horses, Charley wins a competition and trip to San Francisco to even the score with that nameless vigilante. Whips also use more positive means of encouragement. They have the power to allocate offices in the parliamentary estate and are known to offer the possibility of government, or shadow government, positions to MPs in exchange for their loyalty (although it is the prime minister or leader of the opposition who ultimately decides on the allocation of these roles). [2] What is it like to be a whip?

This was a sad tale. It shows the thin line between love and hate. It broke my heart to read the reason she headed west. And things didn’t get any easier for her once she “became a man.”Condition: Very Good. Ships from the UK. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects. This is the riveting story of Charley Parkhurst (1812- 1879) – a woman posing as a man in a society where few women were more than a man’s possession, at best. The character’s historical life is somewhat sketchy. But, in her debut novel, acclaimed actress Karen Kondazian takes this bit of information and turns it into a full-fledged adventure that keeps the reader completely engaged from start to finish. (Personally, at one point in the reading of this tale, I actually had to put the book aside for a bit for fear of what may happen next in the unfolding story line.) Trust me when I tell you that you, too, will actually care about the folks in this story’s telling. You’ll see them (and all that surrounds them) and hear them and want to continue to learn more about each and every one, and discover their eventual fates. This mixture of fact and fiction is superb. My only remaining question is: When will this be turned into an award-winning film? The Whip is simply amazing. I expect author Karen Kondazian to turn this into a screenplay. Bravo to her and to strong women who survive against all odds in a man’s world! Stars. Awesome, cinematic historical fiction –“The Whip” is an engaging, thrilling novel narrated beautifully, it’s evident that “The Whip” would make a wonderful Academy Award Winning film. It is this secret, its implications and its complications that Karen Kondazian speculates on in her fictional book “The Whip.” In doing so, she humanizes a larger-than-life woman, who concealed her gender, embraced one of the most dangerous professions of the west and became the first woman to vote in the United States. If you like stories about individuals who choose to chart their own destinies this is the book for you.