Please welcome Milana Marsenich, author of Idaho Madams. What an interesting topic! You’ll get to know about the prostitute business from the 1850s to the 1980s and I guarantee you, you won’t want to put this book down.
In addition Milana has written a guest post for us about the importance of towns in our fiction works.
Here’s Milana:
The Town as Character
by Milana Marsenich
I believe that towns shape us. A person who grows up in New York City is much different than one who comes of age in a western coastal town such as Coos Bay, Oregon, or a mountain mining town, such as Butte, Montana or Wallace, Idaho. The town can be as significant as parents and siblings in shaping character, philosophies, and experiences.
Giving the town a heartbeat and soul can enhance a story, and help make sense of the choices people make.
Here are five ways to breathe life into a town:
- Give an action to the town: Like a starved wildcat, the town swallowed us whole. The town relentlessly pounded us down, at every corner danger lurked, pulsing through the night, waiting for the sun to rise over the mountains just in time to save us. The buildings welcome secrets I don’t want to tell. Trees whisper to me: move, move along.
- Attribute the five senses to the town: the long grasses caressed my ankles, the town sniffed fog for intruders, who knows what the mining shaft saw down there in the dark, dank air. Early mornings, the town listened for the birds, the coyotes howl, the footsteps of miners trudging to work.
- Ascribe a sense of love or passion to the town: Murray wrapped its arms around the miners. Wallace welcomed the poor, disenfranchised, the hard workers. Boise embraced hard work and innovation. She felt loved by the shabby houses and dark alleys of her town.
- Lace the town with mystery: What secrets did Lewiston hold? The ghostly smoke lifted out of the mineshaft, dark and demonic. When the darkness receded, the town smiled again.
- Treat the town as a friend or foe: She knew the town would protect her. This town beat her down. The too close building suffocated her. The town carried her to the edge street’s edge and watched her first steps into the wild country.
Creating the town as one of the characters in the story can provide wonderful visuals and help put the reader in that place and in that time. It is also fun to interact with the town as a character. You never know what surprises the town might reveal.
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Book Summary
Fur, silver, and gold first lured men to Idaho Territory. Women soon followed. And what women they were! Molly B’Damn, Peg Leg Annie, Spanish Belle, Lou Beevers, Diamond Tooth Lil—the names alone promised excitement and intrigue.
In fact, these madams led complex, turbulent lives. Meet Maggie Hall, a devout Catholic whose husband used her to pay off his gambling debts. Working as a prostitute, Maggie made her way west and, as Molly B’Damn, became the guardian angel of an Idaho mining camp. Or Annie McIntyre, a young girl among the prospectors and ne’er do wells of Rocky Bar who amassed a small fortune as the local madam only to lose it all—along with both her legs.
Idaho Madams uncovers the enigmatic and salacious lives of 30 women who ran brothels in the Gem State from the 1850s to the 1980s. Here are the hedonistic and sometimes heroic exploits of Effie Rogan, Jennie Girard, Nettie Bowen, Ginger Murphy, Dixie Colton, and Dot Allen, but also the unsung sagas of Carrie Young, Grace Freeman, Willow Herman, Hattie Carlton, and many more. As told by author Milana Marsenich, the stories of these women come alive with voluptuous detail, historical photographs, and the social context of the times.
Publisher: Farcountry Press (March 3, 2023)
Print length: 160 pages
Purchase a copy of Sleeping with Ghosts on
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Idaho-Madams-Milana-Marsenich/dp/156037750X/
Barnes & Noble: https://www.b
arnesandnoble.com/w/idaho-madams-milana-marsenich/1143327234?ean=9781560377504
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/idaho-madams-milana-marsenich/19983213?ean=9781560377504
You can also add this to your Goodreads reading list
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123005670-idaho-madams
About the Author
Award winning author, Milana Marsenich, lives in Northwest Montana near Flathead Lake at the base of the beautiful Mission Mountains. She enjoys quick access to the mountains and has spent many hours hiking the wilderness trails with friends and dogs. For the past 20 years she has worked as a mental health therapist in a variety of settings. As a natural listener and a therapist, she has witnessed amazing generosity and courage in others. She first witnessed this in her hometown of Butte, Montana, a mining town with a rich history and the setting for Copper Sky, her first novel.
Copper Sky was chosen as a Spur Award finalist for Best Western Historical Novel in 2018. Her second novel, The Swan Keeper, was a Willa Award finalist in 2019. Her short story, Wild Dogs, won the Laura Award for short fiction in 2020.
She has an M.Ed. in Mental
Health Counseling from Montana State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. She has previously published in Montana Quarterly, Big Sky Journal, The Polishing Stone, The Moronic Ox, BookGlow, and Feminist Studies. She has four published novels, Copper Sky, The Swan Keeper, Beautiful Ghost, and Shed Girl, and one popular history book, Idaho Madams. Her popular history book, Mary MacLane: Butte’s Wild Woman and her Wooden Heart, will be out sometime in 2025.
You can follow the author at:
Website: https://milanamarsenich.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MilanaMarsenichAuthor
X/Twiiter: https://x.com/milanamarsenich
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