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Chicago Review Press Catalogue
Category:
History
ISBN-10: 1569763380
ISBN-13: 9781569763384
Pub Date: June 1, 2011
An illicite history of Montana and the women who pioneered it.
Providing new insights into women’s struggle for equality, this historical study shows the true story of the women of old Montana. With few career options available in the 19th century, many of the most independent and enterprising women turned to the world’s oldest profession for a lucrative source of income. Author Lael Morgan brings to life the lively and eccentric characters who tamed the West's wildest region from the time of the gold rush to the election of the first woman to U.S. Congress: Chicago Joe, with her addiction to handsome men and high finance; Yow Kum, an enslaved Chinese prostitute; the enterprising, successful black prostitute named Lizzie Hall; and Carmen, a "full blossomed Spanish rose who would just as soon stick a stiletto into your gizzard as stand at the bar and have a drink with you." An unbiased exploration of an open society and an unforgettable time in American history, this work showcases how some of these remarkable characters suffered the fate of disease, violence, and alcohol and drug addiction, while a surprising number prospered.
Excerpt
Everything was quiet on the top floor, where the girls were getting their beauty rest while their overnight guests slept off their hangovers. A glance out the front window showed East Mercury to be almost as dull, with only a couple of servants out on errands. Foo Lee and Yse Chung, laboring over breakfast in the big basement kitchen, greeted Grace with the happy news that Yse had managed to repair the dumb waiter which had broken the evening before ferrying an overload of Montana steaks and fine wines. She collected some stray wine glasses in the parlor and two outrageous masks with dangling beards of human hair. Gentlemen hoping to remain anonymous often requested them, and then abandoned them with all caution as the evening heated up. These were lipstick smeared but otherwise undamaged. She set them aside for Foo Lee to clean before returning to their glass display case. Everything was in order. Everything was golden.
Finally, checking her watch, Grace headed slowly to the sub-basement to welcome Nadeau who was due to arrive via one of the underground tunnels that networked beneath the city to house steam heating mains. How she hated to go there! To open that door into that eerie, subterranean darkness broken only by a string of small, bare light bulbs.
It wasn’t the tunnel--which provided Dumas patrons with much needed privacy--but the doorless, open-mouthed caves dug in along the sides, where girls who could afford no better plied their trade on squeaky iron cots. Some brought their pimps to shill for them. Usually, though, they propositioned the passerby themselves, baring most of what they had for sale. The contrast of the Dumas’ sunlit rooms and the disgusting degradation of the tunnel whores was unsettling to McGinnis who so seldom gave thought to the hazards brazened by her sisters in sin.
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