Second Lives

by Richard S. Wheeler

• ISBN13: 9780812545173
• ISBN10: 0812545176
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-03-15
• Publisher: Forge Books

Summary

Denver, Colorado, as wildly spectacular a place as the Gilded Age West ever produced, is the setting for Second Lives by master storyteller Richard S. Wheeler. Into this Rocky Mountain crossroads own in the 1880s streamed all manner of men and women seeking their fortunes in Colorado's gold and silver mines--or at least a chance to make a new life. One such emigrant is Lorenzo Carthage, a likeable adventurer whose dazzling mine ventures fail more often than they succeed. Another newcomer is Dixie Ball, an amazon of a woman who plummets from queen of Telluride to chambermaid in a Denver hotel--and whose fortunes, or lack of them, are tied to the man who she calls "Magnificent" Carthage. Others who seek second lives in Denver include a tubercular poet, and Irish saloonwoman who has known Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson, a failed lawyer, and wealthy woman enslaved by her marriage.

Author Biography

Richard S. Wheeler has written over fifty novels and several short stories. He has won four Spur Awards and the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in the field of western literature.

He lives in the literary and film community of Livingston, Montana, and is married to Professor Sue Hart, of Montana State University-Billings. Before turning to fiction he was a newsman and book editor. He has raised horses and been a wrangler at an Arizona dude ranch.

Table of Contents

"Wheeler's meticulous re-creation of Denver and the people who came there in its raucous heyday is testimony to his reputation as 'a genius of structure of form'."--El Paso Herald-Post

"In this tale of the gold rush and the Gilded Age, Wheeler delivers an entertaining lesson in how to mine happiness form the dross of disappointment and broken dreams."--Publishers Weekly