Laura Evens wasn't any ordinary soiled dove from the days of Colorado's Wild West. Raised by a Grand Cyclops of the KKK from the Mobile, Alabama, branch, she wasn't about to let anything stand in the way of what she wanted. She wanted to be rich. From a lesbian encounter during her first audition into the trade, a gun fight to help save her business, her failed attempts to prevent her friends from poisoning themselves, selling bootleg booze for her supplier who lay dying on her couch, hiding battered women and children from distraught husbands suffering from the effects of the Depression, to identifying the corpse of a friend beaten to death by a lover--all while achieving her goal of owning an entire red light district, which stayed open until December 1949. Laura worked in parlors in Denver, Leadville, Central City, and Salida, until she opened her own Salida parlor house. Laura's house stayed open longer than any other in Colorado, due largely to the unusual qualities of its owner. --back cover