Broken Vows (53 page)
Authors: Shirl Henke
The Comstock Lode comprised the richest mining boom in America's history. Its rapid rise and equally swift demise fitted the stark contrasts of Nevada itself, a place as beautiful as paradise—when there was water; but water was often scarce, leading one wag to scoff, “If hell had water, it would be paradise, too.” The land and its people were as harsh and unyielding as Dorcas Sinclair's bigotry, and at the same time as strong and incorruptible as Ephraim Sinclair's faith. The descriptions of Virginia City and Carson City are as real as I could make them. Wellsville, however, is a fictional town, a composite drawn from descriptions of small agricultural communities along the rich river valleys of the Truckee, the Carson, and the Walker.
The incredible corruption of Nevada politics during the latter half of the nineteenth century is well documented, along with the unscrupulous stock manipulations of the mining and banking crowd, thus providing me with a cast of fascinating villains drawn from real life. These powerful men actually dynamited their own mine shafts, sealing the workers below in order to silence them. In making a killing on the stock market, they occasionally also did some killing, quite literally, in the mine shafts. Ryan Madigan's death is fiction, but many real miners met their deaths precisely that way.
Of the numerous excellent books on Nevada, the best general histories I found are
The Nevada Adventure
by James W. Hulse,
Desert Challenge
by Richard G. Lillard, and
History of Nevada
by Russell R. Elliott. For additional information regarding the evil chicanery of the silver barons and their banking cronies, I used
Nevada, The Great Rotten Borough 1859-1964
by Gilman M. Ostrander.
Nevada, because of early gold and silver strikes during the Civil War era, was one of the first Western territories to achieve statehood, in 1864. For details on the raw and colorful times in the capital and on the Comstock, I relied on Wells Drury's autobiography,
An Editor on the Comstock Lode
. The wonderful mix of characters who fill the pages of
Broken Vows
I owe to Wilbur S. Shepperson's
Restless Strangers
, a rich and fascinating account of Nevada's unique immigrant population.
I hope you enjoy this story of vows made, betrayed, and redeemed. Rory and Rebekah had a few surprises for me as I wrote their story, but no one amazed me more than old Ephraim Sinclair and his grandson. They have lived in my imagination. I hope they live in yours, too, long after you have read
Broken Vows
.
About the Author
SHIRL HENKE lives in St. Louis, where she enjoys gardening in her yard and greenhouse, cooking holiday dinners for her family and listening to jazz. In addition to helping brainstorm and research her books, her husband Jim is “lion tamer” for their two wild young tomcats, Pewter and Sooty, geniuses at pillage and destruction.
Shirl has been a RITA finalist twice, and has won three Career Achievement Awards, an Industry Award and three Reviewer’s Choice Awards from
Romantic Times
“I wrote my first twenty-two novels in longhand with a ballpoint pen—it’s hard to get good quills these days,” she says. Dragged into the twenty-first century by her son Matt, a telecommunication specialist, Shirl now uses two of those “devil machines.” Another troglodyte bites the dust. Please visit her at
www.shirlhenke.com
.