PUGILIST AT WORK

For the last few years, I've been working on a novel about America's first sports celebrity, John L. Sullivan. I'm inching closer to completing a draft that I'm very happy with, which makes the news that Oxford American has just released their Sports Issue, which includes a short essay about my search for the site of the greatest bare knuckle boxing match in American history. Here's an excerpt:

He was the Mike Tyson of the Gilded Age, more Paul Bunyan than Babe Ruth, but his legend might have faded if it wasn’t for an epic seventy-five-round, bare-knuckle brawl with Jake Kilrain, staged in the summer of 1889 on a Mississippisaw mill. A hundred and seventeen years later, the spot is nearly lost to the murk of history.

This issue of Oxford American also includes a personal essay by Pia Ehrhardt and a fantastic short story by Mary Miller.

Comments

[Pete]

Jim, I enjoyed that essay. So did you ever conclusively find the site of the fight? (I'm hoping not - I quite like the mystery of it staying undiscovered.)

[Jim]

Thanks, Pete! I most assuredly can't say I located the site. I found the marker, but they're often inaccurate, misleading, or flat-out wrong. For me, the mystery is very much intact, but I sure did feel dumb when I realized the marker was on the easily mapquest-able Sullivan-Kilrain Road!