About the Book
The Golden Promise of Cripple Creek sweeps readers from modern Colorado back to the rough‑and‑tumble gold camps of 1901–1904, when miners and mine owners clashed in one of the fiercest labor struggles in Western history.
After disgraced social media Maeve Mooney—whose greatest ambition is to marry money so she never has to work again—tumbles down an abandoned mine shaft that her daft Irish grandmother insisted was “magical,” she is transported to 1901 Cripple Creek. Thanks to the discovery of rich veins of gold in what was previously a remote cow pasture, Cripple Creek has become the fourth largest city in Colorado in less than a decade. The District is home to overnight millionaires, ambitious get more info entrepreneurs and hardworking miners who, thanks to the Western Federation of Miners, have created a prosperous life for themselves and their families.
Maeve soon finds employment as a piano player, entertaining wealthy businessmen with songs such as “Rocky Mountain High” (which won’t be written for decades), and ordinary miners at the Pick-Axe saloon, owned by charismatic union leader Ronan Doyle.
While Maeve was initially determined to stay neutral amidst rising tensions, after she and Ronan becomes lovers, she comes to believe as passionately as he does in the WFM slogan: Labor produces all wealth. Wealth belongs to the producers thereof. But even while she works tirelessly to support the strikers, she knows the labor wars, which stretch from the Cripple Creek District to Telluride and beyond, will end in the eradication of the WFM and devastation for the miners and their families.
Along with Ronan himself.
Will Maeve remain in 1904 Cripple Creek to witness the annihilation of her and Ronan’s dream, or will she return to the 21st century and a life that no longer fits?