In 2006, the San Francisco National Bank donated two or three trunks of items that had been left in their safe-deposit boxes, never claimed by the owner or their family or descendants. The trunks had been in storage and forgotten. When they were discovered, the board decided to donate the items, some quite valuable, to the museum, figuring if they hadn’t been claimed in one hundred years they weren’t likely to be. Claire Hamilton had a safe-deposit box. Inside were a dozen journals spanning from 1877 to 1905. The museum started digitizing the most recent journals, as they had the most connection to the era of the earthquake, and as with so many projects, money ran out.
KC: Always the first cut, art and history.
SB: Yes. The last two journals were bundled together, and were Margaret’s and Claire’s accounts of those five months.
KC: That is amazing.
SB: Yes, once word got out, I had colleagues from around the world wanting to take me gambling because I was obviously on a lucky streak!
KC: That’s one way to look at it. Another is that this story wanted to be told.
SB: Yes. A thousand times, yes. It is heartbreaking that these women were forgotten. Not even forgotten, but ignored even during their time. I’m not going to get on my soapbox here, but this story isn’t just an exciting, real-life action adventure, but also a lesson in the power of the press to shape history, of people in power to shape what we know so that it fits a certain narrative and preserves their influence. People think that fake news and propaganda are serious threats to our democracy, and they’re not wrong. The difference is that now the counterpoint, or the truth, according to some people, is available. At everyone’s fingertips. That is a very, very recent phenomenon. Today’s historians suffer from a lack of information, large gaps, and downright holes. Future historians will suffer from too much information, and such conflicting accounts it will be difficult to parse it.
KC: But the winners will always write the history.
SB: They always have, with the exception of the South and the Civil War. It will be interesting to see who writes the history, and if it will even be possible to quash opposing, losing perspectives. I don’t think it will, and it remains to be seen if that’s a good thing or not. I tend to think so. Our history has been one-sided for too long.
KC: The white male perspective.
SB: Mostly, yes.
KC: But that’s changing.
SB: It is. There has been an increased interest in these lost women of history, thanks in part to podcasts like yours, and I hope that Heresy inspires more historians to focus on women in history, and inspires nonhistorians to think about history in a different light, not as something that doesn’t impact us, but as a living, breathing part of everything we experience. Women will read this book, and too much of it will be familiar to them. Maybe they’ll stop and think, ‘You know, we haven’t made as much progress as we should have in a hundred and forty years.’
KC: What is next? Surely this isn’t the end of this story.
SB: I’m not sure what contemporaneous information is left to be found. There’s always the possibility that Luke Rhodes will turn up in the historical record sometime. But who knows.
KC: Is it true that Hollywood has come calling?
SB: Yes, and a New York City publisher has approached me about writing a novel about the Parker Gang.
KC: As in fiction?
SB: Yes.
KC: Don’t they know historians don’t do fiction, only facts?
SB: They say the story is so outlandish it might as well be fiction, and I don’t disagree with them. I’m halfway tempted to do it.
KC: Professor!
SB: Margaret Parker wanted her story to be told, and through a set of crazy coincidences and a huge dose of good luck, I’m the one who has been entrusted with it. I want Margaret and Hattie and Claire and Stella and Joan to have their stories told, to get their due finally, one hundred and forty years later. If that means a movie, a novel, a graphic novel—hell, skywriting, I’m going to do it. I love these women, their resilience, their spirit. The world needs to know that these women were real, and they were magnificent.
Cast of Characters
WPA Slave Narrative Collection (1936)
Henrietta Lee—Ninety-two-year-old former slave
Grace Williams—Interviewer
Marshall Pass Stage Robbery
Grace Trumbull—A bluestocking from Chicago traveling the West to write her memoirs
Emily Butler—Margaret Parker’s alias during the Marshall Pass stage robbery
Benjamin Adamson—Callum Connolly’s clerk
Stella Elbee—Member of the Parker Gang; Joan’s older sister
Joan Jennifer Elbee—Youngest member of the Parker Gang; Stella’s younger sister
Toddy—Wells Fargo stagecoach guard
Jehu Lee—Wells Fargo teamster
Hattie LaCour—Former slave and Buffalo Soldier; co-leader of the Parker Gang (Henrietta Lee)
Margaret Elizabeth Standridge Parker, Duchess of Parkerton—British widow; co-leader of the Parker Gang
Thomas Parker, Duke of Parkerton (deceased)—Margaret’s husband; hero of the Charge of the Light Brigade
Horace Whatley—Miner
Timberline
Newt Valentine—Twelve-year-old son of Timberline’s blacksmith
Ulysses Valentine—Blacksmith; alcoholic and violent man
Lou Valentine (deceased)—Ulysses Valentine’s wife
Sheriff Luke Rhodes—Timberline sheriff who enforces one law: no killing
Rebecca and Harvey Reynolds—Owners of the Timberline general store
Opal Steele—One of two whores in Timberline
Ruby Steele—The other whore; Opal’s “sister”; half-Chinese
Eli—Bartender/bouncer at the Blue Diamond Saloon
Salter—Stranger
The Spooner Gang
Jed Spooner—Outlaw; Margaret Parker’s former lover
Hank “Ought-Not” Henry—Jed Spooner’s lieutenant; safecracker
Domino Jones—Cardsharp
“Sly” Jack Fox—Pickpocket
Maurice “Scab” Williams—Explosives expert
“Dead-Eye” Deacon Jones—Religious fanatic
The Connolly Family
Colonel Louis Connolly (deceased)—Colorado militiaman during the Civil War; cattleman; owner of Connolly Enterprises
Dorcas Connolly—Colonel Connolly’s sister; Callum’s aunt
Callum Connolly—Colonel Connolly’s son; Dorcas’s nephew
Poudre River Ranch and Dinner Party
Zhu Li—Connolly’s Chinese cook; formerly worked for Margaret
Bohai—Her husband
Zeke—Cowboy
Governor John Routt and his wife, Eliza—First governor of Colorado
Nathaniel P. Hill—A gold smelter
Lewis and Dorothy Wilson—A dry goods proprietor with stores in Cheyenne, Denver, Golden
Alexander Bisson—Callum Connolly’s lawyer; helped Colonel Connolly steal Margaret’s ranch
Evangeline White—His paid companion
Denver/Colorado Springs/Cheyenne/Black Hawk
Claire Hamilton—Female detective hunting the female gang; former Pinkerton, hired by Dorcas Connolly
Dr. Alida Avery—First female physician in Colorado; president of the Colorado Woman Suffrage Association
Kaye Hunter—Suffragist
Ashley Perkins—Suffragist
Sally Dove—Colorado Springs prostitute
Rosemond—Photographer and portraitist
Portia Bright—Rosemond’s partner
Frank Chambers—Owner of the Chambers Lodge in Black Hawk, Colorado
Lana Chambers—His wife; Margaret took Lana and her son, Zeke, in when they ran away from her abusive former husband
George—Pinkerton
Wilson—Pinkerton
Mingzhu—Ruby Steele’s given name
Yung Su—D
enver tailor; Mingzhu’s uncle
Glossary
Afterclaps—Unexpected happenings after an event is supposed to be over
Arbuckle’s—Coffee; taken from a popular brand of the time
Blue belly—Yankee
Bluestocking—An epithet for literary ladies
Bow up—puffing up as if preparing to fight someone
Buffalo Soldiers—Black soldiers of the U.S. Army who fought Native Americans and policed the frontier in the years following the Civil War
Calico queen—Prostitute
California collar—A hangman’s noose
California widow—A woman separated from her husband, but not divorced; from when men went west, leaving their wives to follow later
Cracker—A poor southern white person, named after the cracking whips used by rural southerners
Celestial—Derogatory term for a Chinese person
Coulee—a deep ravine
Curly wolf—Mean fellow; tough guy; sometimes a bit of a bastard
Hemp—Marijuana
Filling the blanket—Rolling a cigarette
Fingersmith—Pickpocket
Granger—A derogatory term for a farmer
Laudanum—An alcoholic solution containing morphine, prepared from opium, and used as a narcotic painkiller
Lynching bee—A hanging
Owlhoot—Outlaw
Pancake—English saddle
Peacemaker—Colt .45; the “Gun that Won the West”
Penny dreadful—A cheap, sensational novel of adventure, crime and violence; dime novel; pulp fiction
Pert near—Pretty near
Peterman—Safecracker
Pinkerton—a detective working for Pinkerton National Detective Agency
Poke bonnet—A long, straight bonnet, worn by Quakers and Methodists
Powder monkey—Explosions expert
Six-shooter coffee—Strong coffee
Sodbuster—Farmer
Shebang—General store
Smock-faced boy—Smooth-faced man; white man
Sutler store—General store on an army fort
Throw up the sponge—Give up
Tignon—A piece of cloth worn as a turban by Creole women of Louisiana
Acknowledgments
It’s nothing short of a miracle that you find this book in your hands and are reading these acknowledgments. This was a difficult book to write, for many reasons, some of which have to do with writing, some of which do not. There were many times I thought about quitting, about giving back my advance and admitting the story was too big for me, that I wasn’t good enough, that I was beaten. Basically, I suffered from imposter syndrome for most of the year I spent writing Heresy.
Well, guess what? I won. This book is a big middle finger to imposter syndrome, among other things, and, in the end, it’s my best work to date.
I didn’t do it alone.
Thanks to my agent, Alice Speilburg, for being my biggest champion.
Thanks to Lindsey Hall, Anne Clarke, Tim Holman, and the Orbit/Redhook team for having faith in me that I could deliver this book based on a very thin idea. I can admit now how very thin this idea was. Razor thin. Almost nonexistent. Hence the Year of Difficulties. Their belief in me, not wanting to let them down, is what made me keep going.
Thanks to Bradley Englert for picking up my little orphan and offering wonderful editorial insight, and for loving it as much as I do. Thanks also to Ellen Wright for being the best publicist in the world. Also thanks to Gleni Bartels, S. B. Kleinman, Jenna Dutton, and Crystal Benn, as well as the designers at Jouve.
Thanks to my tribe of writers and pub professionals, who pick up the phone and answer my calls and texts and listen to everything from my “I don’t have a process! Why don’t I have a process yet!” rants (Brooke Fossey) to all my crazy plot ideas (Jenny Martin) to “This book is going to kill me. Will you be sad?” (Mark Hoover) to “Remind me when I have a Great Idea to keep it to myself” (Kendel Lynn/Lindsey Hall/Alice Speilburg). Thanks, too, to everyone at DFW Writers’ Workshop and Sisters in Crime North Dallas for keeping me motivated.
Thanks to historian Laura Ruttum Senturia for your invaluable help with Colorado history, to Ashlee Clark Thompson for help with the representation of Hattie LaCour, to Mark Hoover for your constant love and support and being the best mentor a writer could ask for.
Thank you to all the readers who have reached out to me, excited about my work and eager for this book. I hope the wait has been worth it! To Suehyla El-Attar, Suzanne Owen, Christy Ramirez, Diane Fenci, Jennifer Mason-Black, Blake Leyers, Carin Thrum, Heather Wheat, Terry Matthews, the Winnsboro Book Club, and all of my other friends who have offered support in various ways in the last year.
To my extended family for loving me, believing in me, and looking past my faults and our differences to the soul beneath.
Last, but never, ever least, to Jay, Ryan, and Jack. Whenever things are darkest, I look to you three—my beacons, my true north—on the other side of the doubt, the challenges and the setbacks, and know that your love is there, waiting to embrace me.
meet the author
Photo Credit: Amy Freshwater
MELISSA LENHARDT lives in Texas with her husband, two sons, and two golden retrievers. For more information about her, visit melissalenhardt.com.
By Melissa Lenhardt
SAWBONES SERIES
Sawbones
Blood Oath
Badlands
JACK MCBRIDE MYSTERIES
Stillwater
The Fisher King
Heresy
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