SILVER ECHOES

Rosenberg’s historical novel fictionalizes the struggles of the real-life Silver Dollar Tabor, the troubled daughter of Colorado “Silver King” Horace Tabor and his wife, Baby Doe.

The Tabor family, who once dominated the Colorado silver market while garnering riches, fame, and political power, has suffered drastic reversals of fortune. First, there was the scandal of United States senator Horace Tabor leaving his first wife to marry the controversial Baby Doe. Then came the silver crash, and Horace, who had all of his money invested in their Matchless Mine, lost everything. They moved from the splendor of Denver to the isolation of a shack next to the mine in Leadville. Horace died when his daughter Silver Dollar was still a child; a month later, her older sister Lily, whom she adored, left home. Silver was devasted—enter her imaginary playmate, Echo LaVode. When Silver finally leaves home, determined to become a movie star, Echo travels with her, packed comfortably in the further recesses of her mind. Silver, a talented singer and dancer, becomes a big player in movies. Down on her luck, she attempts the Slide for Life Challenge, a daring high-wire stunt spanning Denver’s Lake Rhoda. Attached to the wire only by a metal mouthpiece, she steps off the platform and begins sailing through the air…until she hits a snag in the wire. This darkly complex, twisty novel toggles between narratives occurring during two different time periods: Silver Dollar’s struggles from 1915 through 1925, and the ordeals of Baby Doe, still laboring at the Matchless Mine in 1932. Setting her tale against the evocative backdrop of Mob-controlled 1920s Chicago speakeasies, Rosenberg vividly brings to life the gradual, angry, and violent emergence of Echo as Silver’s increasingly dominant alter ego, a persona who exacts vengeance and precipitates mayhem while Silver “sleeps.” The author’s prose is riveting and meticulously detailed in scenes like Silver’s aerial stunt; she also composes lyrically magical passages, as when Silver becomes a tiger tamer (“The tigers emerged from the shadows, their massive forms filling the cage, magnificent stripes swirling like molten lava in the dappled sunlight”) and develops a mesmerizing relationship with the powerful wild cats.

A disturbing tale of love, ambition, despair, and redemption.