Otis Bulfinch - Ozarks, Vance Randolph, Tall Tales, Folklore, Christian deconstruction, humor, stories

An Excerpt from Pursuing Daisy Garfield

"Come here," she said to William, almost as if she were calling a dog. "Closer." He stepped so close to her he could feel her breath on his lips. "Touch the back of my neck," she said. William slipped his fingers under her hair. "Now touch my cheek." He stroked her cheek as gently as he killed her husband.

About the Book

The Purple Knight of the Ozarks

The Nearly True Story of T. Allen McQuary

With accompanying links, photos, and articles

T. Allen McQuary, circa 1897

In 1897, a young Ozark newspaperman claimed a Little Rock plantation owner promised him $5,000 and his daughter's hand if he circumnavigated the globe dressed as the Purple Knight of the Ozarks. The quest was a lie. The girl never existed. But T. Allen McQuary's journey—traceable through newspaper archives from Missouri to Charleston to Oregon—was bizarrely real.

Follow the trail through actual newspaper clippings, court records, and a surviving promotional pamphlet. Watch as McQuary transforms from con artist to postmaster to embezzler, spinning increasingly grandiose tales in churches, schools, and Masonic halls across America until his tragic end in 1948.

Artist's rendering of the Purple Knight of the Ozarks

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A serialized novel blending fact and fiction, released weekly with exclusive historical documentation

Bulfinch's Blog: Folktales, Heresies, and Other Ruminations

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The Purple Knight Chronicles

Old Dog, New Tricks

Aug 28, 2025

I was seventeen years of age during the Summer of Love—that's 1967 for the ignorant among you—and I had just dropped out of East Norton High School before the s.o.b.s kicked me out. Finding myself alone on the younger and livelier side of the Generation Gap, I did what was I was supposed to and lit out from home—Stella, Missouri, in case you're interested—and grew my hair out and wore tattered uniforms from the army surplus store in Joplin and smoked Lucky Strikes and spent my days avoiding employment, the draft, committed relationships, and anything else that smacked of responsible conduct. Eventually, I succumbed to more conventional modes of being and tried marriage, only to disappoint a series of wives who deserved better but didn't get it. At least not with me.

Now I'm trying to avoid death, the final futile effort.

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A Hell of a Conundrum

As if life isn't hard enough . . .

Aug 21, 2025

Robin Fields sat in a tree and pondered an old conundrum, namely, the strange doctrine that we are saved or damned not by what we do but by what we believe.

It just doesn't seem fair, he thought. You can more or less control what you do but not what you believe, especially if the evidence is ambiguous or partial. Ambiguous evidence points in opposite directions, and no one knows for sure which direction is right. You just do the best you can.

The problem, as the young man understood it, is that the stakes are too high. It is incumbent on God, if there is a God and if s/he is good, to provide clear evidence so people can make a reasonable choice concerning what to believe. To posit the Bible as the Inerrant Word of God, as circular an argument as you can find, is hardly sufficient and can, in fact, issue in unbelief. Take eternal damnation as an example: That notion is reason enough to throw the whole thing out. Condemnation to an eternal state of suffering simply because you 'choose' a conclusion that turns out to be wrong is unjust, pure and simple, and the attempt to persuade yourself otherwise is an exercise in bad faith.