Cashbox
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $7.99
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
Many people have been drawn to the boom town of Cashbox for very different reasons. Con Daley, the Silver Fox, has made and lost fortunes plunging on new mines. Sylvie Duvalier, loves the rough and tumble of a fevered mining camp, and the gifted men who flock to it. There's stern Thaddeus Webb, superintendent of a great--and dangerous--mine. And Hugh Trego, miner and union man, wanting a fair shake for his men. May Goode is a woman desperate to escape her past. They all collect in the seething, raw town of Cashbox, Montana, looking for wealth.
Cashbox is based on the real Montana silver town of Castle, which bloomed and died in the space of a decade or so. Even now, one can drive there and see the last, tumbling structures, and the rock foundations of the shops that once catered to a bustling town. The Cumberland Mine produced a modest fortune in high grade silver, and even today, glinting black ore is scattered across the flat where the mine stood. In the summer, breezes stir the spirits of those who settled there--for a short while.
Cashbox was the first of Richard S. Wheeler's celebrated print-edition western mining novels. It was followed by Goldfield, Second Lives, Sierra: A Novel of the California Gold Rush, Sun Mountain, and in 2011, The Richest Hill on Earth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Veteran western novelist Wheeler ( Badlands ) offers an entertaining, if somewhat long and predictable ``biography'' of the fictional mining boomtown of Cashbox, Mont. New arrivals in the thriving silver city in 1888 are mining magnate Cornelius Daley and Sylvie Duvalier, an entrepreneur of a different stripe who has come to Cashbox to open a quality ``gentlemen's club.'' The two forge an unlikely alliance and their fortunes soar with those of the town. Soon, the hotly debated local issue is the coming of the railroad, the ever-increasing prosperity it allegedly will bring and how to hasten its arrival. But by 1893, falling silver prices and the demand for ``sound money'' backed by gold are destroying Cashbox's economy, and Con's fabulous Giltedge Mine is barely profitable. The following year, Cashbox is nothing but a decayed set of abandoned buildings, a ghost town dedicated to a failed dream. Con has departed, but Sylvie, refusing to acknowledge the town's passing, stays and comes to a bitter end. Inspired by the real-life stories of Baby Doe Tabor, wife to a Colorado silver king, and of the boom-to-bust town of Castle, Mont., this enjoyable tale gives a vivid picture of life in a still-young but already scarred American West.
