Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor

by Rebecca Rosenberg

Overview

One look at Baby Doe and you know she was meant to be a legend! She was just twenty years old when she came to Colorado to work a gold mine with her new husband. Little did she expect that she'd be abandoned and pregnant and left to manage the gold mine alone. But that didn't stop her!

She moved to Leadville and fell in love with a married prospector, twice her age. Horace Tabor struck the biggest silver vein in history, divorced his wife and married Baby Doe. Though his new wife was known for her beauty, her fashion, and even her philanthropy, she was never welcomed in polite society.

Discover how the Tabors navigated the worlds of wealth, power, politics, and scandal in the wild days of western mining.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780578427799
Publisher:	Lion Heart Publishing
Publication date:	05/28/2019
Pages:	318
Sales rank:	769,500
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.71(d)

Editorial Reviews

10/14/2019

Rosenberg’s exceptional fictionalized portrait of Baby Doe Tabor encompasses her years of triumph and turmoil during Colorado’s early statehood. Newlywed Elizabeth “Lizzie” McCourt Doe heads to Colorado in 1878 from Oshkosh, Wis., to prospect for gold in her first husband’s family mine. After he abandons her, leaving her penniless and pregnant, Lizzie divorces him and supports herself as a tailor in a haberdashery. Her beauty, enhanced by large doelike eyes, earns her the nickname Baby Doe and the adoration of U.S. senator and mining magnate “Silver King” Horace Tabor, who is twice her age. Their passionate love affair, begun while he was still married, sustains them as they weather scandal, financial collapse, and Horace’s political ruin. During their marriage, Baby Doe and Horace are civic-minded Denver philanthropists, providing for the impoverished and building a hotel and opera house, but they have their share of sorrows: suffering slander and social ostracism, her family’s estrangement after her divorce, and his friend’s embezzlement. Rosenberg embellishes with vivid historical markers—Colorado’s mineral rush, the Hop Alley Riots targeting Chinese immigrants, and Horace’s bills for conservation, miner pensions, and Chinese rights. Readers will be drawn in by Baby Doe and leave with a distinct picture of a formidable woman from a tumultuous period of American history. (Self-published.)

Publishers Weekly

"Rosenberg's rollicking Western adventure strikes gold with a gutsy, good-hearted spitfire of a heroine and action aplenty."
--THELMA ADAMS, bestselling author of Bittersweet Brooklyn and The Last Woman Standing

"Baby Doe's fortunes go from rags to riches and back to rags -- it is a real roller coaster ride. The author evokes the 1870s to 1890s with period details. I had no idea how rough mining conditions were for both miners and for the poor donkeys who worked in the mines. The frontier days of Colorado are vividly captured..." -Birdhouse Books

"Gold Digger tells the true story of Lizzie 'Baby Doe' Tabor, a beautiful young woman who in 1878 marries the son of a wealthy miner in order to save her family from penury. Shrewd and stubborn, Lizzie fights back-biting Victorian society, wins and loses vast fortunes, and bests conniving politicians in her larger-than-life story. A twisting tale worthy of Mark Twain, with a big-hearted heroine at the center. ---MARTHA CONWAY, author of The Underground River

"I could not. put. this. book. down. I fell hard for Baby Doe. She survived the ruination of her future dreams, the abandonment of her husband, the loss of her child through miscarriage, a divorce and the scorn of the local women. She wasn't afraid of hard work or getting her hands dirty, and she didn't give up on herself, for herself. This novel was such a beautiful reminder that life isn't always a Disney movie. Sometimes, you have to walk through the mire. People might sneer at the mud on the hem of your dress, or make fun of you for having mud on your shoes. But oh, the victory when you make it through to the other side. The strength that you possess, the pride you feel for pushing yourself. And how I loved Lizzie for being the strength that I was needing in that moment." -Pursuing Stacie

"Epic love story. Fantastic depiction of late 1800s-early 1900s gold rush in Colorado. It was a wild time in history, but also opulence and riches beyond compare for the lucky few. Baby Doe experiences everything from infidelity, miscarriage, betrayal, abandonment, crooks and more and swears off men and marriage. -JAYMI COUCH, Librarian

"The Old West comes alive through Rosenberg's descriptions of the gritty new state and its colorful inhabitants. Miners clad in sooty denim and bankers sporting pork chop sideburns cross paths and swill whiskey at the local saloons. Rosenberg's research enables her to shine a light on lesser known aspects of Colorado's past...Overall, she presents a sympathetic portrait of Baby Doe, despite her protagonist's reputation as a gold digger, delivering a captivating saga based on the true story of a bold woman mining for romance and riches in the Old West. BlueInk Heads-Up: This book will particularly appeal to Colorado readers and fans of American Western historical fiction." - BlueInk Reviews

From the Publisher