THE MRS. TABOR

Based on a true story, a debut Victorian-era novel explores the life, loves, and losses of Colorado’s notorious Silver Queen, Baby Doe Tabor.

Before her marriage to her first husband, Harvey Doe, the future Silver Queen is Lizzie McCourt, a Wisconsin shop girl. By 1883, she is the wife of the wealthiest man in Colorado. But by 1935, the woman dubbed Baby Doe is living penniless in a dilapidated shack outside a used-up silver mine. When a reporter arrives at her home requesting to hear her real story, Baby is forced to revisit the moments and people in her colorful, unconventional life. The novel then transports readers to the late 19th century to trace Baby’s journey. In the wake of Harvey’s failure to strike gold and his descent into drink, she procures a divorce and heads to Leadville with the certainty that her fortune lies amid the mines and the rich men who own them. When she begins a romance with silver baron and Republican politician Horace Tabor, a married man twice her age, the affair ignites a flurry of scandal. While Horace’s first wife, the puritanical Augusta, is unpleasant but business-minded, Baby delights the guileless Tabor, encouraging him to spend his money on lavish, often ill-advised ventures. When Baby finally marries Horace, she finds herself ostracized by high society and her husband’s political aspirations dashed. All too soon, the Tabors watch their opulent lifestyle ripped away from them when the silver market crashes in 1893. Baby navigates tragedy after tragedy, determined to somehow revive the Tabor legacy. Burns paints a vivid portrait of late-19th-century America, capturing the bold, reckless, and ever shifting social conventions of the Wild West and its aftermath. Baby is a captivating and complex character, both sympathetic and flawed and always straining against the confines of her status and sex. With witty prose and a third-person narration that shifts easily between perspectives, the author pays equal care and attention to the people around Baby, whether they adore or despise her. The result is a book that unpretentiously explores the pitfalls of luxury, the desperation of poverty, and the hazards of being an ambitious woman in a world ruled by men.

A thoughtful, immersive, and deeply human look at one of history’s most famous social climbers.