Second Lives - Softcover

Wheeler, Richard S.

4.11

28 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812545176 ISBN 13: 9780812545173

Publisher: St Martin's Press, 1999

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In Second Lives, Spur Award-winning author Richard S. Wheeler turns his storytelling genius to that great Western crossroads Denver, Colorado, in its formative years during the raucous 1880s. To this place, during an era when the search for gold and silver makes millionaires overnight and unmakes them just as quickly, comes Lorenzo Carthage. His mining ventures are daring, and he stages balls and parties of dazzling sumptuousness even when his fortunes fail - which is more often than they succeed. Another arrival is Dixie Ball, a gentle, plainspoken amazon of a woman whose fortunes and failures - from mining queen of Telluride to chambermaid in a Denver hotel - are inextricably tied to the man she calls "Magnificent" Carthage. Others who gather in Denver include Homer Peabody, Esq., a good man but a failed lawyer eking out an existence in a shabby office. His doomed life takes on new meaning when he is visited by Cornelia Kimbrough, who regards herself as chattel enslaved by her marriage to the cold, powerful, unforgiving financier Walter Kimbrough. She, too, seeks a new life for herself, even if it means sacrificing her ambitions. Meanwhile, Yves Poulenc, a tubercular poet who comes to Colorado for its curative waters, dreams of Keats and dying nobly, but he finds his melancholy plans are thwarted by a woman who makes him understand the power of hope.

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Review:

"Wheeler's meticulous re-creation of Denver and the people who came there in its raucous heyday is testimony to his reputation as 'a genius of structure of form'."--"El Paso Herald-Post" "In this tale of the gold rush and the Gilded Age, Wheeler delivers an entertaining lesson in how to mine happiness form the dross of disappointment and broken dreams."--"Publishers Weekly"

About the Author:

Richard S. Wheeler has written over fifty novels and several short stories. He has won four Spur Awards and the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in the field of western literature. He lives in the literary and film community of Livingston, Montana, and is married to Professor Sue Hart, of Montana State University-Billings. Before turning to fiction he was a newsman and book editor. He has raised horses and been a wrangler at an Arizona dude ranch.

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