The Silver Baron's Wife by Donna Baier Stein

The Silver Baron's Wife by Donna Baier Stein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Silver Baron's Wife is the last of the CIPA EVVY award winners I have chosen to read. Like the others, it is excellent. The Silver Baron's Wife won second place in the 2017 CIPA Evvy awards in historical fiction. (As I mentioned in the other reviews, my book, Hopatcong Vision Quest, won a merit award in the same competition, which is why I decided to read the other winners.)

This is the story of Baby Doe Tabor (Elizabeth McCourt Tabor) who lived from 1854 to 1935. She was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, then moved to Colorado after her first marriage. Her father-in-law gave her and her husband, Harvey Doe, a quarter share of a Colorado mine named the Fourth of July. When she first saw the mine, Lizzy fell in love with mining - “Dropping down into the Fourth of July had, like tasting the communion wafer on my tongue, opened me to a new understanding. If I'd felt betrayed after my confirmation, when Jesus let the fire take everything my family and I owned, a new confidence came over me after my descent into the mine. I was more than ready to believe there were treasures we couldn't see that were ready to be shared.”

Baby Doe was not a popular woman in the area where she lived, because she made some life decisions that were not acceptable at that time. However, Donna Baier Stein decided to write this novel from Baby Doe's point of view and the woman comes off as a strong and sympathetic character. I don't want to include any spoilers in here, yet I do have to say this is a rags to riches story, but doesn't stop there. Stein has created a wonderful character in Baby Doe, someone I will think about for a long time. She also created a wonderful picture of life in a mid-west mining town during the late nineteenth century.

Steve Lindahl – author of Hopatcong Vision Quest, White Horse Regressions, and Motherless Soul


View all my reviews