Women’s Voices for Change states The Silver Baron’s Wife is “an immensely readable novel”

The Silver Baron’s Wife, Baier Stein’s first novel, was published last month. It’s based on the true story of Lizzie “Baby Doe” Tabor, a woman whose eight-decade life took her from middle-class respectability in Wisconsin to the hardscrabble silver mines of Colorado. She refused to adhere to the gender limitations of her day, donning men’s clothing and going down into the mines herself in order to save her ne’er do well first husband’s fortune. Then, after a scandalous divorce, she became the center of an infamous love triangle and eventually mistress of a luxurious Denver mansion, a woman who hob-nobbed with the nation’s most powerful men, even while their wives snubbed her. Her fortunes turned again, however, and Lizzie died alone and impoverished in a tiny mining cabin. Throughout her life, she recorded her dreams and searched for her own personal — and for the times, very progressive — sense of spirituality. Many fragments of her real-life writings, which are housed today in the Colorado Historical Society, punctuate Baier Stein’s moving book.