Wicked

Name: Red Light Women of Death Valley
Brand: Robin Flinchum
SKU: 9781467117517
Price: 24.99 USD
Availability: InStock

The Wicked American history book series introduces the wicked, notorious history of our towns, states, and local communities. Meet the Red Light women of Death Valley, discover the bloody mining disputes of Coeur D’Alene, and gamble your way through Kentucky’s Sin City. From scandalous Newport, Rhode Island to the misdeeds in Jurupa Valley, this wicked history series covers the most salacious and sordid in stories, coast to coast! [View all Wicked Series books]

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Red Light Women of Death Valley

Wicked Crescenta Valley

Gary Keyes

$21.99

Robin Flinchum

Red Light Women of Death Valley

9781467117517

$24.99

From the 1870s to the turn of the century, while countless men gambled their fortunes in Death Valley's mines, many bold women capitalized on the boom-and-bust lifestyle and established saloons and brothels. These lively ladies were clever entrepreneurs and fearless adventurers but also mothers, wives and respected members of their communities. Madam Lola Travis was one of the wealthiest single women in Inyo County in the 1870s. Known as Diamond Tooth Lil, Evelyn Hildegard was a poor immigrant girl who became a western legend. Local author and historian Robin Flinchum chronicles the lives of these women and many others who were unafraid to live outside the bounds of polite society and risk everything for a better future in the forbidding Death Valley desert.

William Burg

Wicked Sacramento

9781467140591

$24.99

In the early 1900s, Sacramento became a battleground in a statewide struggle. On one side were Progressive political reformers and suffragettes. Opposing them were bars, dance halls, brothels and powerful business interests. Caught in the middle was the city’s West End, a place where Grant “Skewball” Cross hosted jazz dances that often attracted police attention and Charmion performed her infamous trapeze striptease act before becoming a movie star. It was home to the “Queen of the Sacramento Tenderloin,” Cherry de Saint Maurice, who met her untimely end at the peak of her success, and Ancil Hoffman, who ingeniously got around the city’s dancing laws by renting riverboats for his soirées. Historian William Burg shares the long-hidden stories of criminals and crusaders from Sacramento’s past.

Kim Jarrell Johnson

Wicked Jurupa Valley

9781609495206

$21.99

The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders a horrible 1928 national news story that inspired the 2008 movie The Changeling from director Clint Eastwood are only the most infamous despicable deeds that have bloodstained the rural countryside between Riverside City and the San Bernardino County line. Jurupa Valley has been a region of dark doings and scandalous misdeeds for generations. The city of Jurupa Valley was formed in 2011 from the area's smaller communities, including Wineville (renamed Mira Loma to escape the shame), Pedley and Rubidoux. Buried in its landscape are salacious sagas of unchecked bootlegging, payday orgies and gruesome murders. Author Kim Jarrell Johnson digs deep to disinter the unsavory stories that have traditionally marked her home city as a resting place of enduring infamy.

Gary Keyes

Wicked Crescenta Valley

9781626193062

$21.99

From illegal gambling and prostitution to claims of alien abduction, Crescenta Valley has seen it all. Once home to thriving moonshine operations and shocking Nazi rallies, the valley's past is riddled with scandalous tales that many would prefer to forget. Yet not all of Crescenta Valley's tawdry history could remain forgotten or hidden in its day. The infamous C.C. Julian oil scandal made national headlines. Even today, recent information reveals a local internment camp for Japanese and Germans that opened the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Join Gary Keyes and Mike Lawler, authors of Murder & Mayhem in the Crescenta Valley, as they reveal the seamy underbelly that belies the valley's beautifully pleasant exterior.