Author Description

A lively blend of history, mystery, travel, and adventure, Digging Up Butch and Sundance is the story of a wayfaring couple who spend all their spare time roving Argentine pampas, Chilean deserts, and Bolivian sierras, poring over faded newspapers and musty documents, and poking around cemeteries to solve the last great mystery of the American West: what really happened to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? The hit movie starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford ends with the wounded bandits dashing into certain death in a plaza rimmed with Bolivian soldiers. Although three volleys resound, the frame freezes with the outlaws still on their feet. Audiences around the world have fallen in love with the affable screen duo, but historians continue to argue about the fate of the real Butch and Sundance. The Bolivian shoot-out has never been documented, and many old-timers - including Butch's sister Lula - swear they have seen Butch and Sundance alive and kicking long after their supposed deaths. Anne Meadows and her husband, Dan Buck, stumble onto the mystery in Argentina, where Butch and Sundance, accompanied by Etta Place, tried to build new lives as respectable ranchers after fleeing the United States in 1901. With the tenacity of Pinkerton agents, Anne and Dan track the outlaws through austerely spectacular landscapes and back in time to the places where fact and folklore diverged. The hunt eventually yields eyewitness accounts of Butch and Sundance's final holdup and the fatal gun battle. Anne and Dan then join renowned forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow to excavate the bandits' alleged grave site in San Vincente, a forlorn, windswept outpost in the chilly uplands of southwesternBolivia. While filling in the blanks in the saga of Butch and Sundance, Anne paints vivid portraits of life in South America. Writing "with clarity and humanity and a sense of humor", she has produced what True West magazine aptly calls "a groundbreaking book".