- Rebecca Rosenberg will be at Macdonald Book Shop (152 E. Elkhorn Ave., Estes Park) Monday, Sept. 1, from 4 to 6 p.m.
- She will be signing copies of her novel, “Silver Echoes,” the sequel to “Gold Digger.”
Let’s welcome Rebecca Rosenberg back to Colorado.
“I lived in Colorado from kindergarten through college,” Rosenberg wrote in a recent email. She attended the University of Colorado and studied psychology.
That knowledge came in handy when she tried to figure out what made the famous Tabor women, Baby Doe and her daughter, Silver Dollar, tick.
“Gold Digger” is about Silver Dollar’s mother, Baby Doe Tabor. “Silver Echoes” is about both mother and daughter.
Rosenberg said she first learned about Baby Doe Tabor and her marvelous life of riches and loss when she was very young.
“I read every dime-store brochure about her: the love triangle, her daughters, Silver Dollar and Lily, and the Matchless Mine,” she said. Over a period of 15 years, she wrote “Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor.”
Rosenberg also holds a Stanford University Novel Writing Certificate. She now lives and writes on her lavender farm in Sonoma, Calif., where she and her husband, Gary, founded one of the largest lavender product companies in America.
“I currently live in Sonoma, Calif., but maintain yearly trips to Colorado to see friends and roam the mountains,” she wrote. “While (building the lavender farm) I was writing ‘Gold Digger,’ taking a two-year novel writing course at Stanford University, as well as dozens (or is it hundreds?) of writing courses and workshops to hone my craft,” she said.
While Rosenberg has chosen to write historical fiction, the story of the Tabor family is spell-binding and true.
Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor, born in 1889, was the second daughter of Horace A. W. Tabor of Colorado (“The Silver King”) and his second wife, Elizabeth McCourt “Baby Doe” Tabor.
Silver Dollar was very young when the United States adopted the gold standard, and the value of silver plummeted. When Horace died, Baby Doe Tabor and her two daughters lived in a shack on the Matchless Mine property in Leadville, Colo.
Baby Doe always thought the mine would be viable once again (it never was). Her daughter, Lily, went to live with her grandmother. And Silver Dollar left home as soon as she was able, determined to succeed in show business. Or something.
Rosenberg’s novel, “Silver Echoes,” offers a unique explanation for the inconsistencies, instability, and lapses in the young woman’s life. Rosenberg suggests that Silver Dollar suffered from dissociative identity disorder, or a split personality. Rosenberg invents a character, Echo, who is the wild child, the part of Silver Dollar that drinks and dances, has no boundaries, and knows no limits.
Silver Dollar had many opportunities, but none came with permanent success. She wrote a song, “President Roosevelt’s Colorado Hunt,” and a photograph of them made the front pages of many newspapers. But she was on a downward spiral.
She wrote a novel, “Star of Blood,” danced and sang in burlesque shows, and was rumored to be an alcoholic, prostitute, and drug addict. She lived in Chicago and was thought to be a friend of the Mafia. But was this Echo or was this Silver Dollar?
She died in 1925, when she was 35, under painful and mysterious circumstances, possibly murdered.
Throughout her adult life, Silver Dollar kept in touch with her mother by letters. Baby Doe Tabor denied her daughter’s ugly death and instead claimed that her daughter had entered a convent.
“Silver Echoes” mixes fact and fiction, myth and legend, in a readable account of a tragic life. Rosenberg is a champion of many spirited women who lived in the past. Her 2018 book, “The Secret Life of Mrs. London,” was followed by “Champagne Widows” (2020), “Madame Pommery” (2022), and, most recently, the sequel to “Gold Digger,” which is “Silver Echoes” (2024).
Elisabeth Sherwin is a journalist who teaches memoir writing at the Estes Valley Community Center. She holds a master’s in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, worked as a copy editor at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the San Francisco Examiner, and was a reporter, editor, book reviewer, and copy editor at the Davis (Calif.) Enterprise. She also taught journalism at UC Davis Extension. She lives in Allenspark. Her book reviews and other writings can be found on her website, Printed Matter.