In Calamity’s Wake is Natalee Caple’s new novel from Bloomsbury. The author unravels and reties western mythology into the story of Miette, a woman on a journey to find her mother: the infamous soldier, drinker, and exhibition shooter, Calamity Jane. Poetic and hallucinatory, In Calamity’s Wake examines one of the first female pop icons of America, and how history made and unmade her. Caple stopped by the Joyland office last month when she was in New York for a reading. In talking with her about the novel we learned things we never knew about her. Like how a writer from Toronto ended up winning a free rodeo wedding or what happened when she did a reading in Deadwood, South Dakota, where the name Calamity Jane is still unwelcome. In one of the most honest moments ever on our podcasts, Caple reveals how an act of violence and a death shaped the writing of her novel.