Leadville U.S.A.

Leadville U.S.A. by Nichols, Robert. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781555660970.

This is not a book about silver kings and fabulous fortunes, but rather it is the reminiscences of everyday people - the miners, gamblers, prostitutes, teachers, and others - who through courage and perseverance managed to live and thrive in one of the more rugged settings in the West. Ed Larsh was born in Leadville and numbers among his ancestors members of the above occupations. Grandfather John Minor Larsh was a gambler; Great-aunt Mamie one of Leadvilles first schoolteachers; and Great-aunt Edie a glamorous lady of the evening. Grandmother Rachel was the fiber which held the family together. This is their story and the stories of their descendants, told not from some far-removed point of historical scrutiny, but told and retold through three generations of family story hours. Here are the real people and the real stories of what life was like in Leadville and throughout the U.S.A., for in sharing the experiences of the Larsh family, we are given a glimpse into our own. The result is real, deeply human, and very much alive. Larsh and Nichols avoid the statistical, the encyclopedic, and the glorification of the famous, all of which has been done before, for Leadville as well as for the whole West. Instead, they are able to recognize and tease out the human truths that lie inert in the raw material of history. Leadville U.S.A. is a book to treasure.