By Ann Parker
2003, 2006, 2009 Poisoned Pen Press
ISBN 1-59058-072-9
Reviewed by Nancy Hudelson
Ann Parker’s Silver Rush historical mystery series, published by Poisoned Pen Press, is set in the silver boomtown of Leadville in the 1880s. The series is rich with tales of greed, lust and deception when men and women stopped at nothing, not even murder, to strike it rich. There can be no doubt that the rush mining era in the 1880s in the Colorado Rockies was one of the most exciting chapters in the history of the American West.
Ann Parker’s ancestry, which includes a great grandfather who was a blacksmith in Leadville and a grandmother who worked at the bindery of Leadville’s Herald Democrat newspaper, lends authenticity to her storytelling about those golden years of the Silver Rush. Her love of history, especially Silver Rush history, is evident as she includes fascinating and well-researched period details in her fast-paced stories.
The first book in her series, Silver Lies, sets the stage for a story full of interesting characters that have courage and heart. The heroine of these stories, Inez Stannert, is a strong female protagonist whose husband has mysteriously disappeared eight months earlier, and whose young son is off staying with Inez’s sister in the East. As Inez struggles, along with her business partner Abe Jackson to keep her saloon business going, she encounters many challenges typical of the rugged life of the Silver Rush days. Business partner Abe says of her missing husband, “There are many things that can happen to a man in these mountains. Things that’d keep him from coming back. Mark loved you and the young’un, Inez. It wasn’t his nature to pick up and leave.”
In Iron Ties, the second in the series, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad is coming to Leadville and its rich Rocky Mountain mines. The coming of the railroad is sure to bring along many more challenges to the fledgling community. With her business partnership in the Silver Queen Saloon shaky and the bonds of family slipping away, Inez is in a precarious position. Her husband is still missing and her son is still back East. Her own complicated personal life includes a love affair with Reverend Justice Sand, which is still a well kept secret. She is also concerned about her backroom deal with upscale brothel madame Frisco Flo, a deal that Inez gambles might make her financially independent.
In Leaden Skies, it is the summer of 1880, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad has brought former president and Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant to this city at the top of the Rockies. Potential investment opportunities in Leadville’s silver mines have brought many others to town with their own agendas. Some have political agendas, others economic hopes, and always there is the seductive call of a flourishing red light district.
As part owner in the Silver Queen Saloon, Inez Stannert has often observed the ruination that comes from yielding to temptation. But when the murdered body of one of Flo’s women is discovered, Inez learns that Flo has another business partner and Inez has second thoughts about her business relationship with Flo. She is determined to face the demons from her past even as she fights to save her reputation and her life.
Ann Parker’s “Author’s Note” for Leaden Skies can be found on her website: www.annparker.net.
The website is full of fascinating information about Leadville’s culture during the Silver Rush days and she gives suggestions for further reading as she cites her resources. Ann Parker’s resources and research are prodigious. For a long time, she says, she had wanted to do something with a mapmaker character that comes to Leadville. In Leaden Skies this character takes form and appears in the very first chapter of the book, as mapmaker Cecil Farnesworth, who, in the opening scene, is about to visit one of Leadville’s fancier brothels.
Parker studied many old maps and was particularly fascinated by the maps connected to the early, itinerant surveyors who worked for the fire insurance map industry. Their well-documented work provides valuable information about the period. And as anyone who has enjoyed reading western history knows, fires played a big role in early life in the West, as hastily built and flimsy buildings often went up in flames in frontier towns.
Ann Parker’s research also turned up fascinating information about the Chinese immigration situation, a hot button issue of the day, as was women’s rights. Parker’s character, Serena Clatchworthy, who appears in Leaden Skies, is roughly based on Caroline Nickols Churchill, publisher of the Colorado Antelope, Denver’s earliest women’s rights newspaper.
As for prostitution, this pastime was alive and well in the old West. In her “Author Notes” for Leaden Skies, Parker cites research that explores the relationship between lawmen and prostitutes and the fact that sexual traffic indirectly encouraged police corruption as the police had the option of enforcing the law at their own discretion.
I’ll tell you this much. I’m hooked.
Nancy Hudelson always seems to be buried in books, whether she’s working as a librarian, working in The Book Haven or reading and writing them.
