Annie Oakley is a work of historical fiction built around the 1887 visit of Annie, as a performer in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, to the small rural city of Watertown in Northern New York. The device used by the author, a mystery crime writer and a Watertown native himself, is to have Annie solve a crime during her visit. The visit was real, the crime fictional, although no more than a small diversion from the body of the narrative itself. The book's real point is to give the reader a taste of the flavor of the late nineteenth century, especially in small town America, and of traveling extravaganzas of the day like "Buffalo Bill's Wild West," and also to detail Annie Oakley's highly unusual life, so different from the conventional contemporary mythology of shows like "Annie Get Your Gun," before and after her Watertown visit. It is said that "Annie Get Your Gun" star Ethel Merman was asked why Annie's real life would not have made for a much more interesting stage play, her response was "It would, but then the show would be a melodrama and I'd be a wreck."