I have always loved the west. The history. The lives of those who settled there and what they endured. The ruggedness. Whenever my husband and I plan a trip, we always head west. Now, while I love history and the west, I’d only written one historical romance, The Trail to Love, set on the Oregon trail.
Several years ago, a new book event came up – Wild Deadwood Reads. It had been a long time since I’d been to Deadwood, but I recall it being steeped in history. So, I thought, why not? I can combine selling books with staying in such an historical town.
Several events were planned. One was a ride on an 1880s train. The train trip ended in Keystone, another historic town. As our bus drove down the street, I saw a sign which read “The Balcony Girl.”
Boom, a story idea came to me. It would be set in Deadwood during the early years. Now, I didn’t know that much about Deadwood’s history, so I had to do what authors love to do – RESEARCH. I bought books (and read them all) on Deadwood. Books on the characters who lived there. I delved through pictures and got lost on the internet.
Finally, I was ready to start writing, but what year to start it in? I chose 1879 – the year a fire nearly destroyed the town. But what about a conflict? Brothels had what they called their “Balcony Girls.” They would stand on the establishment’s upper balcony in their scantily clad bodies, and call the men in.
Now prostitutes, or soiled doves, then as now, were held in the lowest esteem. Anyone, other than men, who associated with them was considered to be one of them. A “proper” woman would never acknowledge a prostitute without being scorned by society.
So, in June of 1879, Julia and Suzanne Lindstrom arrived in Deadwood from a farm in Minnesota. Suzanne was to be the new school marm. Julia came along to be with and take care of her sister. Can you imagine their thoughts when they first saw Deadwood, with its haphazard buildings, muddy streets, animals running wild, and rough men in the streets?
Julia is a seamstress, but how would she make a living in Deadwood where most of the population were men who wore their clothes until they were rags. She ends up doing what a “proper woman” would never do. She befriends a brothel madam and sews clothes for the women who work in the brothel. Of course, she has to keep what she is doing a secret – even from her sister. Not an easy task. And when a prospective suitor finds out . . . Well, you can imagine what happens.
The Balcony Girl is the first book in my “Darlings of Deadwood” series. I couldn’t stop with one book. Her sister, Suzanne, needed her own story. Then there was the sister of Suzanne’s suitor and owner of a hotel. Let’s not forget the nasty wife of one of the town’s bankers. My next one will be a female blacksmith. All strong women trying to find their way in the male-dominated west – and surviving.
When the sisters arrived, the town was still booming, but becoming more settled. Roads were still muddy, animals still roamed and Main Street divided into the ‘good side’ and the “Badlands” where the saloons and brothels were located. How would they survive?
Oh, by the way, that sign I thought said, ‘The Balcony Girl,’ actually read ‘The Balcony Grill.’
I would love to give away one copy of “The Balcony Girl.”
To be considered to win a copy,
tell me an unusual job you’d like to see a woman in another “Darlings of Deadwood” would have.
Tina Susedik is the author of forty books and anthologies including romance, history, military, and children’s books. She is an award-winning, Amazon best-selling author, and the host of “Cover to Cover with Tina.” Find her online at: http://www.tina-susedik.com
Some real-life episodes in the Old West read like fictional adventures. Some read like tragedies. Some read like romances.
The life stories of a few non-fictional characters—like Kitty LeRoy—combine all three.
“…Kitty LeRoy was what a real man would call a starry beauty,” one of her contemporaries noted in a book with a ridiculously long title*. “Her brow was low and her brown hair thick and curling; she had five husbands, seven revolvers, a dozen bowie-knives and always went armed to the teeth, which latter were like pearls set in coral.”
From all reports, LeRoy was a stunning beauty with a sparkling personality that had men—including both notorious outlaws and iconic officers of the law—throwing themselves at her feet. She was proficient in the arts of flirtation and seduction, and she didn’t hesitate to employ her feminine wiles to get what she wanted.
Often, what she wanted was the pot in a game of chance. One of the most accomplished poker players of her time, LeRoy spent much of her short life in gambling establishments. Eventually, she opened her own in one of the most notorious dens of iniquity the West has ever known: Deadwood, South Dakota. With spectacular diamonds at ears, neck, wrists, and fingers glittering bright enough to blind her customers every night, it’s no wonder LeRoy’s Mint Gambling Saloon prospered.
With her reputation as an expert markswoman, there was very little trouble…at least at the tables.
LeRoy was born in 1850, although no one is sure where. Some say Texas; others, Michigan. One thing is certain: By the age of ten, she was performing on the stage. Working in dancehalls and saloons, she either picked up or augmented an innate ability to manipulate, along with gambling and weaponry skills that would serve her well for most of her life. According to local lore, at fifteen she married her first husband because he was the only man in Bay City, Michigan, who would let her shoot apples off his head while she galloped past on horseback.
Lower Main Street, Deadwood, SD, 1877
A long attention span apparently was not among the skills LeRoy cultivated. Shortly after her marriage, she left her husband and infant son behind and headed for Texas. By the age of twenty, she had reached the pinnacle of popularity at Johnny Thompson’s Variety Theatre in Dallas, only to leave entertaining behind, too.
Instead, she tried her hand as a faro dealer. Ah, now there was a career that suited. Excitement, money, men…and extravagant costumes. Players never knew what character they would face until she appeared. A man? A sophisticate? A gypsy?
Texas soon bored LeRoy, but no matter. With a new saloonkeeper husband in tow, she headed for San Francisco—only to discover the streets were not paved with gold, as she had heard. While muddling through that conundrum, she somehow misplaced husband number two, which undoubtedly made it easier for her to engage in the sorts of promiscuous shenanigans for which she rapidly gained a reputation.
Although the reputation didn’t hurt her at the gaming tables, it did create a certain amount of unwanted attention. One too-ardent admirer persisted to such an extent that LeRoy challenged him to a duel. The man demurred, reportedly not wishing to take advantage of a woman. Never one to let a little thing like gender stand in her way, LeRoy changed into men’s clothes, returned, and challenged her suitor again. When he refused to draw a second time, she shot him anyway. Then, reportedly overcome with guilt, she called a minister and married husband number three as he breathed his last.
Now a widow, LeRoy hopped a wagon train with Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane and headed for the thriving boomtown of Deadwood. They arrived in July 1876, and LeRoy became an instant success by entertaining adoring prospectors nightly at Al Swearengen’s notorious Gem Theatre. Within a few months, she had earned enough money to open her own establishment: the Mint. There, she met and married husband number four, a German who had struck it rich in Black Hills gold. When the prospector’s fortune ran out, so did LeRoy’s interest. She hit him over the head with a bottle and kicked him to the curb—literally.
Gem Theatre, Deadwood, SD, 1878
Meanwhile, thanks to LeRoy’s mystique—and allegedly no little fooling around with the customers—the Mint became a thriving operation. LeRoy reportedly “entertained” legendary characters as diverse as Hickock and Sam Bass. But it was 35-year-old card shark Samuel R. Curley who finally claimed her heart. Curley, besotted himself, became husband number five on June 11, 1877.
Shortly thereafter, Curley learned LeRoy hadn’t divorced her first husband. The bigamy realization, combined with rumors about LeRoy’s continued promiscuity, proved too much for the usually peaceful gambler. He stormed out of the Mint and didn’t stop until he reached Denver, Colorado.
Folks who knew LeRoy said she changed after Curley’s departure. Despite nights during which she raked in as much as $8,000 with a single turn of the cards, she grew cold and suspicious.
Her grief seemed to dissipate a bit when an old lover showed up in Deadwood. LeRoy rented rooms above the Lone Star Saloon, and the two moved in together.
By then, Curley was dealing faro in a posh Cheyenne, Wyoming, saloon. When word of LeRoy’s new relationship reached him, he flew into a jealous rage. Determined to confront his wife and her lover, he returned to Deadwood December 6, 1877. When the lover refused to see him, Curley told a Lone Star employee he’d kill them both.
LeRoy, reportedly still pining for her husband, agreed to meet Curley in her rooms at the Lone Star. Not long after she ascended the stairs, patrons below reported hearing a scream and two gunshots.
Deadwood, SD, 1878
The following day, the Black Hills Daily Times reported the gruesome scene: LeRoy lay on her back, her eyes closed. Except for the bullet hole in her chest, the 27-year-old looked as though she were asleep. Curley lay face down, his skull destroyed by a bullet from the Smith & Wesson still gripped in his right hand.
“Suspended upon the wall, a pretty picture of Kitty, taken when the bloom and vigor of youth gazed down upon the tenements of clay, as if to enable the visitor to contrast a happy past with a most wretched present,” the newspaper report stated. “The pool of blood rested upon the floor; blood stains were upon the door and walls…”
An understated funeral took place in the room where Curley killed his wife and then took his own life. Their caskets were buried in the same grave in the city’s Ingleside Cemetery and later moved to an unmarked plot in the more noteworthy Mount Moriah.
The happiness the couple could not find together in life, apparently they did in death. Within a month of the funeral, Lone Star patrons began to report seeing apparitions “recline in a loving embrace and finally melt away in the shadows of the night.” The sightings became so frequent, the editor of the Black Hills Daily Times investigated the matter himself. His report appeared in the paper February 28, 1878:
…[W]e simply give the following, as it appeared to us, and leave the reader to draw their own conclusions as to the phenomena witnessed by ourselves and many others. It is an oft repeated tale, but one which in this case is lent more than ordinary interest by the tragic events surrounding the actors.
To tell our tale briefly and simply, is to repeat a story old and well known — the reappearance, in spirit form, of departed humanity. In this case it is the shadow of a woman, comely, if not beautiful, and always following her footsteps, the tread and form of the man who was the cause of their double death. In the still watches of the night, the double phantoms are seen to tread the stairs where once they reclined in the flesh and linger o’er places where once they reclined in loving embrace, and finally to melt away in the shadows of the night as peacefully as their bodies’ souls seem to have done when the fatal bullets brought death and the grave to each.
Whatever may have been the vices and virtues of the ill-starred and ill-mated couple, we trust their spirits may find a happier camping ground than the hills and gulches of the Black Hills, and that tho’ infelicity reigned with them here, happiness may blossom in a fairer climate.
Deadwood was on several years ago and I didn’t watch, but we discovered Season 1 because we watch a lot of On Demand series and, well, I put the first epi on just to see Tim Olyphant. Yes, I’m that shallow. I became a huge Olyphant fan from watching Justified.
By the way, Justified isn’t family viewing, but Deadwood has it beat by a country mile on the curse per minutes ratio. If you don’t like profanity, stay far, far away. I don’t mind it and even so it is pretty over the top. It isn’t sprinkled with it, it’s SATURATED.
BUT I love it just the same. It has complex characters who aren’t completely good and aren’t completely bad either. It is very wild west, dirty, corrupt, resilient, generous…
Part of the reason why I am so taken with it is because I began watching with a built-in…well, knowledge doesn’t sound quite right but maybe “impression” fits because of a very different fictional accounting of the town – the novel FORGIVING by LaVyrle Spencer.
I can’t imagine LaVyrle would have soaked her prose in f-bombs, but there are things she had in common with the series.
1) Painting a picture of a rough, lawless town where the only women were the whores in the brothels.
2) One man who stands out as the good guy, yum yum! (And yes, I mean Tim as Seth Bullock)
3) A spunky, well-spoken, classy heroine. While Deadwood is populated with several characters and storylines, Alma Garrett (Molly Parker) truly stands out.
4) The addition of the story of Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane. I love this part. Jane was such a rough character with such a big heart.
5) The addition of a small pox outbreak and pestilence tents
6) A good, upright man in love with a prostitute.
If you haven’t read Forgiving, see if you can find a copy. It’s a wonderful read. Especially a particular scene at midnight on Christmas Eve. Deadwood’s coarseness might not be for everyone, but Forgiving is a beautiful story that will still manage to give you the flavour of this gold rush town.
And if you can’t find Forgiving, my newest release, A Family For The Rugged Rancher, is out in the UK this month. You can find out more on my website: http://www.donnaalward.com .
Tina Susedik is the author of forty books and anthologies including romance, history, military, and children’s books.She is an award-winning, Amazon best-selling author, and the host of “Cover to Cover with Tina.”Find her online at: http://www.tina-susedik.com
Deadwood was on several years ago and I didn’t watch, but we discovered Season 1 because we watch a lot of On Demand series and, well, I put the first epi on just to see Tim Olyphant. Yes, I’m that shallow. I became a huge Olyphant fan from watching Justified.
3) A spunky, well-spoken, classy heroine. While Deadwood is populated with several characters and storylines, Alma Garrett (Molly Parker) truly stands out.
