Who is the woman on the cover?She is a Dodge City prostitute, and her name is Timberline. More than that, no one knows. I found her photograph while doing nonfiction research on prostitution (the image appears in several books), and just felt a connection to her.
I loved her fierce expression, her defiance... and also her vulnerability. In a scene from the novel, the professor basically tells Nora what he thinks about her features, which echoes what I think. (And she responds that her jaw is like a shovel, which is partially true but doesn't diminish her looks!)
Luckily, I found the image early on, so that I had her face in mind as I wrote the novel. To me, she truly is Nora.
The photograph is in the collection of the Kansas State Historical Society, and I worked with that organization to get permission to use it. Heyday Books added spot color so she would have lipstick and a gory bloodstain.
It's odd to think that this woman posed for her photograph a hundred or more years ago, never knowing that it would wind up as an illustration in several nonfiction books, and the cover of a novel. Would Timberline approve of Woman of Ill Fame? Would she get a kick out of it? Would she be angered? If she's anything like Nora, she would undoubtedly be contacting me to get a portion of the profits.
Next reading: Sunday, March 4, 2007. Bird & Beckett's in San Francisco, 4:30 p.m., 2788 Diamond (cross street is Chenery... this is close to Glen Park BART). 415-586-3733
Weird. I found her picture in a coffee table book about Gunfighters of the Old West and was transfixed by it, so I looked her up to see if I could find some backstory.
ReplyDeleteI believe the name of the woman is Rose Vastine. She apparently got the name "timberline" because she was six foot two in height. Reference to her is made in a University of Oklahoma press biography on Bat Masterson
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