Silver Echoes: A Gold Digger Novel by Rebecca Rosenberg; The Adventures of Baby Doe Tabor’s Wild Thrill Seeking Daughter

 Silver Echoes: A Gold Digger Novel by Rebecca Rosenberg; The Adventures of Baby Doe Tabor’s Wild Thrill Seeking Daughter 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: When I read about Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor (1889-1925) on Wikipedia and in the epilogue in Rebecca Rosenberg’s Historical Fiction novel, Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor, I knew that she would be an interesting person to read about. I was not wrong.

Of course that is to be expected. Rosenberg's Historical Fiction novels are about remarkable outstanding and highly interesting women and her latest, Silver Echoes: A Gold Digger Novel is no exception. Two novels, Champagne Widows and Madame Pommery, were about Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin and Jeanne Alexandrine Louise Melin Pommery respectively entrepreneurs and vintners who made the French wine industry what it is today. Her previous book, Gold Digger was about Elizabeth McCourt “Baby Doe” Tabor and her rise from mine owner and worker to Denver socialite and her fall after Horace Tabor, her politician husband, died and the Panic of 1893 wiped out her family fortune.

This time Baby Doe’s younger daughter, Silver Dollar takes the lead and she is every bit her mother's daughter in her desire to stand out and her ability to draw controversy and scandal like a magnet. 

The novel covers about twenty years and alternates between Silver Dollar and Baby Doe’s points of view. Silver Dollar's perspective is set in the 1910’s-20’s as she embarks on an entertainment career, unpredictable romances with dangerous men, and potentially undiagnosed mental illness. Baby Doe's is set in 1932 after Silver Dollar’s death is reported. Baby Doe is trying to get her Matchless Mine running again while giving background information on a biopic about her and her late husband.

As with many Historical Fiction novels, we get not only the main story of the protagonist’s life but the impact that their lives had on those who outlived and learned from them. In this case, both mother and daughter are well written formidable presences with captivating stories that draw in the Readers.

If Baby Doe embodies the spirit of the Gilded Age with her self-made entrepreneurship, sudden glamorous affluence, and the ability to talk tough while dressing classy, then Silver Dollar embodies the Roaring 20’s with her effervescent joie de vivre, her constant mobility, and modern independent spirit.

Silver Dollar begins her journey as a bit player for a photoplay company to support herself and her mother after Horace dies, they are left destitute by the Economic Panic, and their older daughter and sister, Lily abandons them. While her work is for survival and she sends money to her mother, Silver Dollar is not unaware what it could mean for her so she creates lavish stunts like the Slide of Life, to be noticed and recognized. This is where she slides, rather than walks, across a high wire over a large lake.

This opening gives us a taste of the setting and Silver Dollar’s character. This is when movies were in their infancy, not every home had a radio so people found entertainment wherever they could. That often included people going to great extremes to get the audience’s attention. Remember this was the time when Harry Houdini wowed audiences with his escape attempts. When vaudeville houses dotted even small towns so people could pay a few cents to see singers, dancers, jugglers, acrobats, comedians, animal trainers. Many of the vaudevillians would move on to long and successful careers on film, radio, and television. It's the right time for someone bold, daring, and thirsting for adventure and recognition like Silver Dollar.

While Slide of Life gives her the much needed praise and notoriety, it doesn't last. An envious colleague frames her for theft and she is sexually assaulted by a long time family friend so she goes on the run. This happens a lot in the book. She finds some semblance of fame, excitement, and wealth. A place and position that can give her prominence and stability. Then, something happens that causes her to end that and leave for her next adventure.

She becomes an actress, dancer, singer, animal tamer among others and meets an array of film stars, mobsters, and other celebrities of the early 20th century. It's a dizzying colorful ride, but it can't be accused of being boring.

Eventually Silver Dollar finds fame as a tiger tamer. Her interactions with the tigers consist of patience, trust, strength, courage, and determination. It makes sense that someone who is wild and reckless would tame animals as wild and reckless as she is. She sees kindred spirits in her tigers and they see a human that loves and understands them while being a dominant and authority figure. 

There is a darker edge to this novel that is found within Silver Dollar herself. While she gives off a fearless personality, inwardly she is insecure, uncertain, and is always questioning herself. She has moments of doubt, reason, and conscience that put a stop to more dangerous and violent actions. However there is a darker side to her personality, literally.

In the Afterward, Rosenberg stated that there is some evidence, albeit circumstantial and never outright acknowledged, that Silver Dollar had Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Rosenberg took that theory to its fullest fruition by giving Silver Dollar an alter, Echo LaVode, which was a name that the real Silver Dollar sometimes used during her professional career.

Echo is the darker aspect of Silver Dollar’s extroverted nature. She has no fail safes, reservations, or blockers that impair her actions. She acts without thinking and when she is in charge she puts herself and Silver into dangerous situations like drinking, taking drugs, visiting speakeasies, and flirting with dangerous men who are violent and unpredictable. Since Echo parties at night and Silver Dollar works during the day, Silver Dollar herself gets little sleep. Therefore, her body goes through physical changes that weaken her host and leaves the alter to be in control more times than she should. This control leaves Silver Dollar helpless and vulnerable, a victim of Echo’s unpredictable tendencies.

However, Echo occasionally shows a softer side. She emerges when Silver Dollar needs physical protection. She is horrified when she witnesses African-Americans being lynched by KKK members suggesting that there are actions that are abhorrent even to her. She is also clever enough that if Silver Dollar can't think of an escape plan, she can. Even though Echo is an alternate personality, she is every bit as multifaceted as her host.

Silver Dollar’s story is one of instability, going from place to place, and living fast and hard. It's about using life to take as much as you can. By contrast, Baby Doe's story is about being sedentary, restoring home and professions to their former glory, and becoming the holder of wonderful and painful memories. 

In 1932, Baby Doe is trying her damnedest to honor Horace's final wish to hold onto the Matchless Mine and living in denial that her daughter has died (She believes that Silver Dollar was sent to a convent). She tells her memories of her Leadville home and family to filmmaker, Carl Erickson who was involved with Silver Dollar and tried to be a steady solid presence in her life.

As with her portrayal in Gold Digger, Baby Doe hovers between a tough talking frontierswoman and a society matron. She is ready with a shotgun if she feels threatened and when Carl wants to understand her, she takes him to the Matchless Mine. She is ready with a sharp comment and matter of fact nature so Carl knows who's really in charge and he does not dream of making the script too sentimental or frilly. Even in old age and after she has lost nearly everything and everyone important to her, she still is a force to be reckoned with.

The movie's Denver premiere gives Baby Doe some of the glamor that she once had. Gone is the tough gal with a dilapidated mine and a shotgun and instead she is once again a lady in an elegant gown and a central figure in Denver’s social set. Her good carefree days are back at least briefly.

The ending is a bit of wish fulfillment that veers towards speculation and alternate universes. It gives a finality to the mother and daughter's stories and reminds us that these were two strong fascinating women with a bond that was never broken but changed. Mother and daughter learned from and loved each other.

The Girl Who Didn't Get Married by Mark Ross; Bookish Madness

 

The Girl Who Didn't Get Married by Mark Ross; Bookish Madness

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Books like any other arts and entertainment medium offers a means of escape, information, deep thought, knowledge, relaxation, and fun.

Mostly it can be a good thing but for some it can be a detriment especially if they have trouble separating fantasy from reality. Sometimes, what they read becomes more real than the world around them and they identify with the characters so much that they can't separate themselves from them. That is the conflict facing Emma Jenkins, protagonist of The Girl Who Didn't Get Married by Mark Ross, a psychological thriller about a bibliophile who is put into a destructive situation and copes by using her very active literary fantasy life.

Emma is engaged but her fiance, Christian calls it off the day before their wedding. Apparently he had something on the side with Dana Martin. Police officer Jared Evans interrogates her on the day of the wedding that never was to inform her that Dana was found dead inside a hotel room. Witnesses saw someone who looked like Emma leaving the hotel. She had the opportunity, means and certainly a motive so it doesn't look good. As Jared investigates Emma, Emma does her own investigation to clear her own name and confront Christian. She is also caught up in her favorite mystery novels and psychological thrillers identifying with characters like Amanda Chapman and Claire Rosen so much that she not only interacts with them but actually becomes the characters.

The Girl Who Didn't Get Married is a strong insightful psychological thriller about a woman who is on the cusp of losing her sanity right when her entire world is falling apart around her. 

Emma is someone whose delusions are getting in the way of living her life.

There are chapters where she talks to her favorite literary characters and they offer advice on her current predicaments. Whole chapters are told from those characters’ points of view not Emma's so the Reader is required to pay attention to whether Emma, Amanda, Claire, or one of the other characters is on the scene. 

It can get very confusing to follow especially when chapters jump from one point of view to another and where they purposely contradict each other. For example Amanda does things that Emma doesn't remember doing or has no control over. 

There are strong suggestions that Emma identifies with these characters because they act in ways that she wants to. They are brave, confident, self-assured, seductive, alluring, strong-willed, and are able to manipulate situations in their favor. Reading about, talking to, and becoming these characters becomes a wish fulfillment for a woman who feels like she has no sense of self-worth or identity and feels like a cypher in her own real world. Someone who things happen to rather than making them happen for herself.

Emma's transformations from character to character are the highlights of the book more so than the plot. The plot is suspenseful and mind twisting. There are some interesting detours and revelations that require the Reader to read closely and even go back to review them again just to be sure.

However, some plot points can be discombobulating. One in particular will have the character scratching their heads in confusion and torn between whether they loved or hated it. It requires some deep thinking and a potential suspension of belief but it also resonates with what we know about the characters and the information in which we are given and can infer.

The Girl Who Didn't Get Married is a compelling look at a troubled bookworm’s fractured mind. It's a bit dramatic but is also intriguing and sometimes scary to imagine how quickly that could become us.

Weekly Reader: Bound by P.L. Sullivan; Brilliant Concept and Strong Female Lead (or Leads) Make Up For The At Times Confusing Plot

Weekly Reader: Bound by P.L. Sullivan; Brilliant Concept and Strong Female Lead (or Leads) Make Up For The At Times Confusing Plot

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: One thing that I will say about Bound by P.L. Sullivan is that its concept is incredibly intriguing and original. It involves a woman from a seemingly violent race who has another personality surgically attached to her and she is required to commit violence in the name of another world. It's a strange concept but science fiction allows us to imagine the impossible and Bound excels at that.

In a world of Polis, Adin Rayne is a Keld. That basically means in her home world with it's rigidity, laws, and preference for nonviolent conflict, Adin is well an outlier to say the least. The Keld are held under suspicion because they appear to have violent and sociopathic tendencies. In fact, Adin, as a nursery school child, was responsible for the death of one of her caregivers. The authorities have the bright idea to channel those violent tendencies and have her serve in their military peacekeeper organization. Her violent tendencies are even further curbed by her being mentally  bound to another girl at the point of death named Shennan. Shennan is supposed to calm Adin's more violent nature into something more diplomatic. 

Decades later, Adin and Shennan are sent to investigate a strange disorder called The Mad or Rills. Rills spread from planet to planet afflicting people with insanity. Insanity becomes a contagion and anyone could be affected. It's a tough assignment, one that causes a lot of problems for Adin/Shennan and their colleagues, friends, and family. It is a very painful disorder in which glyphs appear on the victim's face and they act in a violent thoughtless manner.

This is one of those science fiction novels with an incredibly confusing plot. Sometimes it's hard to tell who is fighting who, who all the players are, and what side they are on. It's one of those books were you expect a traitor because everyone is pretty much suspect. Unfortunately, unlike Centricity which is well written enough to make the Reader go back and decipher what they missed, the density of Bound's plot doesn't leave enough interest to do that. The revelation of the Rills' origin is someone hard to follow as well whether they are organic or man made and act according to their own survival instincts or someone else's orders.

However what the plot lacks in coherence, it makes up for a very baffling and intriguing concept, particularly within the characters of Adin and Shennan. The bound is sort of like having Dissociative Identity Disorder except the other personality is surgically inserted inside the body. However, the bound goes one step further. When one woman sleeps or is shut down, the other takes over. They are able to communicate telepathically even when one is asleep and the other awake. They share each other's thoughts, memories, and know one another's associates, friends, and lovers. What is particularly impressive is that when one personality is ascendant, the body changes appearance to reflect which one is in charge. So they can go from short androgynous dark haired Adin to tall sexy blond Shennan within a conversation.

What is most fascinating with this concept of binding is that we see how this affects  both Adin and Shennan. The bound brings out their most positive and negative attributes. Adin is the more action gung ho fighter. When it comes time to investigate trouble on a planet, guns ablazing, she's your woman. She has a strategic military thought process and doesn't mind using it by leaving a few bodies in her wake. 

Shennan is the diplomat. She is the one called on to negotiate with planetary leaders and speak to superior officers in the calm rational manner that Adin lacks. Shennan is the talker and Adin is the doer.

There are times when their morals and values flip flop. Shennan's cold nature and determination to meet an assignment to the finish sometimes clashes with Adin's concerns about the living element and what the cost is to all involved.

Shennan and Adin's dichotomy is expertly explores in terms of their relationships. Adin is more reserved and had an on again/off again lover. Shennan however is more sexually adventurous and has had male and female lovers. Some of the more moving chapters occur between Adin and Shennan and Shennan's former lovers, including Cale, a man with whom she broke his heart when they were in the Academy, and Lyssa, a woman who Shennan considers her greatest love.

With the Bound, Sullivan raises some interesting themes and questions about the nature of violence. In some ways, the book is similar to A Clockwork Orange in that if someone is brutally forced to give up their violent nature then does that make it right? Adin and Shennan are not a whole person. They are two halves of one person unable to function without each other. In their insistence in using Shennan to end Adin's violence, the Polis prove to care very little about the cost on these two women or their emotional and psychological states. They also seem to have little regard for what their orders mean to the other planets and their citizens. Their authoritarian nature ends up being colder, more violent, and more sociopathic than anything that Adin would have thought of on her own.

Bound is sometimes hard to follow but its concept and characterization are incredible. Anyone who reads to it will be Bound to have an intriguing thoughtful suspenseful time.

Weekly Reader: I Love You To Pieces by Lori Flynn; Mystery and Mental Health Drama Does Not Mix Well

Weekly Reader: I Love You to Pieces by Lori Flynn; Mystery and Mental Health Drama Does Not Mix Well

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: It's ironic that Lori Flynn's novel, I Love You to Pieces is about a protagonist with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Because the lead character isn't the only one who is confused about her identity. The tone of the book is uncertain whether it wants to be a murder mystery with an obvious twist or a dramatic story about a young woman's illness being used as a coping mechanism from an abused childhood. The two shifting tones show that the DID diagnosis is so paramount and obvious that it should have served as the main plot point instead of spending so much time trying to hide the secret from the Reader when they know what the secret is.


Olivia Harding is the wealthy Floridian daughter of a loving father and an abusive mother. Her father Alexander adores her but he dies in a plane crash when she is nine. Her mother, Elizabeth, is a cruel horrible woman. She kills Olivia's lovebirds and cat out of malicious spite then breaks her arm in a fit of rage. After her father's death, Olivia moves in with Catherine, her loving grandmother, and gets some semblance of peace. However, she suffers from PTSD and has blackouts of events that she can't remember.

There is a haunting moment when Olivia is trapped by Elizabeth inside a storage room. Catherine receives a phone call from a small but threatening voice saying that "Elizabitch" has locked Olivia up and could she get her out. This passage foreshadows how Olivia's illness served as a protector against her mother, but then became a hindrance for her living a full life.


Olivia grows into a loving young woman who decides to create fundraisers for her family's non-profit shelter for rescue dogs. Catherine is still a loving feisty presence in her life. She has two female friends, Jill and Melody, who also have personal and psychological problems. She befriends and becomes romantically involved with Ben, her family's young attorney. She seems to be adjusting to life.

Unfortunately, she still has her psychological disorders that she doesn't want anyone to know about. She still has blackouts and can't remember certain things like going through a procedure to get an IUD inserted inside her. Nor can she explain the expensive clothes or the marks on her body that suggests sexual acts in which Olivia does not remember taking part.

Then there are the chapters which are told from the point of view of Delia, a wild foul mouthed escort to wealthy visitors to Florida. She does her bit but constantly wants to "be free" and needs to get to her place by a certain time. It becomes evident that Delia and Olivia are the same person and that Olivia has DID with Delia serving as an alternate personality.


If the book had introduced us to Olivia's DID from the beginning, it would function well as a general fiction book about a woman struggling with an illness that she barely understands partly because of her blackouts and the confusion of the people around her. She could have seen a psychiatrist through Catherine and been diagnosed early on. We could have had many chapters of her trying to reconcile her personalities with herself and her life. The book could have chronicled her recovery and reconciling herself with her other personalities as well as confronting Elizabeth with what she caused.


But no what could be a realistic story of living with Dissociative Identity Disorder becomes a hoary murder mystery/psychological thriller, as theatrical as Shutter Island by using DID as a plot twist instead of an illness. There is the usual subplot of Delia committing violence and Olivia being accused of it. The confusion among friends and other characters when she is suddenly not herself when it is clear to the Reader why she is not herself. The mystery is not even that convincing since we know who did it.

Because the revelation of her illness occurs halfway through the book, Olivia's recovery is glossed over into the final couple of chapters. We are given a late third personality to learn about before that happens. We are given very little insight of what it is like to live with such an illness when it is used as merely a plot point instead of an actual illness that many people struggle with in real life.


I Love You to Pieces could be a better book, but unfortunately the pieces don't fit together to make a complete whole.