Matchless

by Jane Candia Coleman

Horace and Augusta Tabor left Maine to seek their fortune and ended up in the mining camps of Colorado. While Horace panned for gold, Augusta prepared meals for miners. Eventually she opened a store and became postmistress while raising their young son.

One day they were happily at work and the next day Horace struck it rich and everything he touched turned to gold, or rather, silver. It was then that their lives diverged. After twenty years of hard work and unity, Augusta was renounced as an embarrassment by a man who could buy anything in the world.

244 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2003

Reviews

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book of insight and brilliance by Jane Candia Coleman. She writes most of her novels in first-person, and has a true talent in REALLY defining her protagonist. For example, in Tumbleweed: Allie Earp Remembers, she even gets the sweet-but-plain tone and sometimes bawdy personality of Allie Earp down perfectly. She does take some artistic license, as fiction must do, BUT the novels she writes are as biographical as it gets and still be loosely-called fiction.

Likewise, the same perfection of tone of the character is nailed in Augusta Tabor, first wife of the Colorado silver legend, Horace "Haw" Tabor. If you already know the tale of the Tabors and are familiar with the history of Colorado, you'll love this. Or even if you know very little, it's great storytelling.

She characterizes perfectly what I thought Augusta would have been like--frugal, honest, hard-working, loyal. You already must know, that Augusta would be quite intelligent. She came from good stock, was educated, and she was good at managing money, hence her survival.

You agonize with what it's like to have loved a man so deeply, only to be cast aside and neglected, esp. if you're middle-aged. Augusta has always gathered much respect from historians, canonized in history as the long-suffering martyr or the frigid bossy wife (a dumb interpretation and entirely inaccurate). From a women's studies point of view, it's interesting to read Joan Nolte Temple's discussion of traditional iconoclastic roles, Augusta as martyred saint, Baby Doe as whore and home-wrecker.

But Coleman's treatment of Baby Doe isn't biased. Baby Doe is portrayed as probably what she was--a child/wife, niave, possibly not very intellectual nor well-read, a vessel for Horace to pour his insatiable lust.

You do end up hating Horace Tabor somewhat, which is understandable. I think he was probably a visionary for a while and truly did contribute to Leadville and the growth of Denver. But bottom line, it's hard to respect someone who ditches his wife then dies leaving the second wife and children starving and penniless. He strikes me as a man with narcissitic-personality disorder at best, a buffoon pretty much, one who couldn't manage his money, and had little integrity.

Bravo to Jane Candia Coleman. I also will order and read Betty Moynihan's Augusta Tabor: A Pioneering Woman since Jane gives props to it.

P.S. My only complaint is that Jane Candia Coleman's imprint, "Five Star Western" through name alone, gives the impression that this is strictly cheesy genre-fiction, "Western" which may turn literary-types and historians away. But her work, personally, I consider quite literary and historical. I wish she was on a bigger imprint, say Penguin, but (shrug) maybe Five Star Western is a good publisher.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love her writing and the history of women. So much is left out on the lives these women lead. Grouping up in Colorado I recall hearing about Baby Doe Tabor but not Augusta Tabor so much. So thrilled to hear the real story!