����

Author Rebecca Rosenberg’s latest book continues her literary�� work highlightingthe often-overlooked stories of remarkable women

With the release of her newest historical novel, University of Colorado Boulder alumna Engl; Psych'76) is adding another chapter to a writing career focused on uncovering the lives of extraordinary women that history has often overlooked.

The award-winning novelist’s latest work, , tells the story of Silver Dollar Tabor, the daughter of Elizabeth McCourt Tabor, better known at Baby Doe Tabor. This newest historical novel builds on Rosenberg’s first book, , the rags-to-riches-to-rags story of Baby Doe, who navigated the worlds of wealth, power, politics and scandal in the wild days of western mining.

��

���� Boulder alumna Rebecca Rosenberg with her historical novel Silver Echoes, which is based on the story of Colorado's own Silver Dollar Tabor. (Photo: Rebecca Rosenberg)

���� Boulder laid foundation for writing career

Rosenberg credits growing up in Colorado and her time spent at ���� Boulder with nourishing her interest in the American West, particularly stories about pioneers in the Centennial State.

“I grew up in Colorado,” says Rosenberg, “and being in Boulder and in Hallett Hall, looking out at the mountains all the time, it was just really inspiring in terms of just living in Colorado and the pioneers and the people that came before us there and their incredible stories.”

Rosenberg was a theater and psychology major while on campus but was drawn to classes in multiple departments.��

“I loved my humanities courses. I got a bigger perspective,” she says. “I think that got me excited about the whole world and the stories of the world. And pretty soon I realized that people don't tell stories about women. They tell stories about men. So that's where I got my inkling that I would like to tell those stories.”

After graduation, Rosenberg continued to feel the pull toward story. She eventually found her way to a two-year novel-writing course at Stanford University, where she learned how to combine her interest in storytelling and her background in psychology.

“A novel is always about conflict,” she says. “Every scene is what is the conflict and what does each character want? What do they desire? So yeah, psychology is instrumental in that.”

From her time at Stanford, and the work of 10 years after, came her first book, Gold Digger, which brought to life the story Baby Doe Tabor, a beautiful young woman who married the son of a wealthy miner in 1878 to save her family from poverty. The book won plaudits for its mix of historical detail and fiction, with the Historical Novel Society calling it “a gripping story of female grit and resilience.”

Since then, Rosenberg has gone on to win accolades for her novels The Secret Life of Mrs. London, Champagne Widows��and Madame Pommery. Rosenberg and her husband, Gary, are lavender farmers in Sonoma Valley, California, and they are co-authors of the nonfiction pictorial book Lavender Fields of America: A New Crop of Farmers.��

��

In Silver Echoes, ���� Boulder alumna Rebecca Rosenberg (Engl; Psych'76) continues the Tabor story she began in her novel Gold Digger, based on the rags-to-riches-to-rags story of Baby Doe Tabor.

Telling the overlooked story of Silver Dollar Tabor��

In Silver Echoes, her most recent novel and Gold Digger’s sequel, Rosenberg uses her psychology background even more extensively, finding the story she wanted to tell through a discovery about one of history’s most misunderstood women, Silver Dollar Tabor. Silver Echoes is told through a dual timeline, following Silver Dollar, Baby Doe’s daughter, in 1920s Chicago and Baby Doe in 1930s Colorado searching for answers to her daughter’s disappearance.

“It's really an intense novel because I feel like Silver had DID, or dissociative identity disorder, what used to be called split personality,” Rosenberg says. “I found that in my research of the letters between mother and daughter, how dissociated Silver was from several realities. Every time she'd write a letter, she'd write about a whole different reality in her life.”

For her first novel, Rosenberg studied Baby Doe's diaries and the letters between her and Silver Dollar, who was in Chicago in the speakeasies and an actress in movies. She noticed the mother’s worry over Silver and knew there was a story to tell there.

“I was reading these letters and I saw that Silver Dollar was asking her mother to write her a letter under a different name to a different address in Chicago every other week. And so I thought, ‘What is going on there?’” says Rosenberg. “Nobody had really explored that. Everyone was saying that she just fell into being a prostitute. But I didn't see that. I saw that she was telling her mother that she was going to open a flower shop with this girlfriend and that she was working for Marshall Fields. And then she was a hat check girl at a speakeasy and all these different things. And then she would be engaged to one guy and she was going to get married and then you never heard about him again.”

Rosenberg started studying what Freud and Jung wrote about multiple personalities. She noticed that all of Silver’s inconsistencies—paired with a childhood filled with multiple traumas—pointed to DID. With that diagnosis, Rosenberg proceeded to tell the story of Silver Dollar Tabor with new insight and creativity.��

“I always do really extensive author's notes, telling exactly what's true and not true and where I'm making a leap,” she says. “No one ever diagnosed Silver Dollar as having DID because they hadn't even identified it then. But throughout the book, I have segments of what Sigmund Freud says during that time and what Jung says about women that sound exactly like her. I made the leap that she had that. And that's definitely a leap. No one has ever said it before.”

It's these deep dives and creative exploration of story that Rosenberg enjoys most about writing historical fiction. Finding the unknown stories and uncovering what’s remained untold until now.

“I will always write about extraordinary women,” she says. “They fascinate me. The research takes me a long time. I have to read a lot of books about their background before I can even start on a project. It's a very fun and very satisfying kind of work if you love to research and telling stories.”

Rosenberg’s newest book,��, is set for release this month. Another dual timeline novel, the book tells the story of Lily Bollinger, the “Dame of Champagne,” who refused to surrender to the Nazis during WWII and to other enemies for decades more.

Did you enjoy this article?����Passionate about arts and sciences?��Show your support.

��