BACK IN CRIPPLE CREEK

Mrs. Lee's sequel to Cripple Creek Days (1958) about her own girlhood in the famous mining camp takes up the recollections of others, old timers whom she interviewed before they ""crossed the range."" She stayed a summer at Cripple Creek, rooming first over a morgue, then with Agnes Dewar and her brother Jack at Hoot Mon Apartments. She talked with Two-Bit Lil, who at eighty could recall life in the red light district and boast ""I don't have to take no pension from the state of Colorado;"" with George Coplen, who almost put an end to Jack Dempsey's career--and later with Jack at Romanoff's, who remembered the fight well. She gathered stories of strikes and sin, of the Clyde Mine and Carrie Nation, of grand madames such as Pearl de Vere and the rough diamond known as the Boiler-maker who served as a nurse during the flu epidemic after World War I. She spoke in hospital with the staunchest fighter of all, Tom ""Sailor Boy"" Sharkey. A trip back to Cripple Creek in 1956 revealed a tragic denouement at Hoot Mon. Mrs. Lee has mined a small claim of authentic Americana for a primarily regional readership.