DURANGO, Colo.— Author Judy Nolte Temple will be reading from and signing copies of her biography Baby Doe Tabor: The Madwoman in the Cabin, Mon., Aug. 4, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Maria’s Bookshop, 960 Main Avenue in Durango.

The story of Baby Doe Tabor has seduced America for more than a century. Long before her body was found frozen in the Leadville shack where for decades she had guarded the Matchless Mine, Elizabeth McCourt “Baby Doe” Tabor was the stuff of legend. The stunning divorcée married Colorado’s wealthiest mining magnate and became “the Silver Queen of the West.” Horace and Baby Doe mesmerized the world with their wealth and extravagance. Blessed with two daughters and with the Matchless Mine’s earnings of $2,000 a day, they spent seemingly limitless riches.

But Baby Doe’s life was also a morality play. Almost overnight, the Tabors’ wealth dis­appeared when depression struck in 1893. Forced to shovel slag at the mines, Horace died six years later. According to the legend, one daughter left home never to return; the other died horribly. For 35 years, Baby Doe, who was considered mad, lived in solitude high in the Colorado Rockies.

Baby Doe Tabor left a record of her madness in a set of writings she called her “Dreams and Visions.” These were discovered after her death but never studied in detail—until now. In Baby Doe Tabor: The Madwoman in the Cabin, author Judy Nolte Temple retells Lizzie’s story with greater accuracy than any previous biographer. She unpacks the mythology to uncover Lizzie’s actual experiences as told in her frag­mentary writings and correspondence. Undertaking the first close analysis of Lizzie’s writings, Temple reveals a story more heartbreaking than the legend and, for the first time, gives voice to the woman behind the myth.

Judy Nolte Temple, associate professor of Women’s Studies and English at the University of Arizona, is the author (under the name Judy Nolte Lensink) of “A Secret to Be Buried:” The Diary and Life of Emily Hawley Gillespie, 1858–1888.

For further information, call 970.247.1438 or visit www.mariasbookshop.com.

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