Love was never meant to end in murder, but for Ellar Day it became her legacy.
Set against the rugged beauty and hardship of an 1880s Colorado mining town, The Notorious Murder of Ellar Day is a meaningful reflection of love that dared to cross racial divides.
Nineteen-year-old Ellar Day finds herself caught between the man she loves and a community steeped in rigid prejudice. When their ill-fated relationship puts her family in peril, Ellar forsakes her heart and turns to a prominent newspaper editor for a new beginning–unaware that his promises of safety come with a dark past and a treacherous scheme.
Told from beyond the grave, this romantic tragedy brims with passion, betrayal, and the quest for redemption. Inspired by true Colorado events, this novel honors the memory of lives cut short by injustice and buried beneath the cold silence of the American West.
Excerpt:
I sped down the stairs and out the door. The hag’s vicious laugh haunted my ears. Across the street stood Joe, speaking with the men with whom he played cards. They joked and smoked cigarettes. Surely they knew and were laughing at me. They fell silent as I dashed past. I tossed my mask.
“Missus Woodcock?” he said.
I ran on, too confused to orient myself.
“Excuse me,” I heard him say. To me? To his friends? I continued, hell-bent on escaping my dreadful embarrassment. I saw Mr. Begole’s store was closed up tight with the kerosene streetlights reflected in its windows, and the black night everywhere else. Kicking mud behind me, I rushed toward the company housing.
When I got to my tent, I hurled Chas’s clothes from the top drawer. I stomped them into the muck and mire of my life. It dawned on me that my wicked husband spent my money on whores and sodomites. I spat rancid bile from my mouth, and it landed just shy of Joseph W. Dixon’s feet.
“You all right?” He held my mask, now tarnished with mud.
I stared at him, wishing to scream. Instead, I kept my voice low and even. I gnashed my teeth.
“What does the W stand for?” I asked.
“What?”
“The W stands for What?”
“What are you asking me?”
“Your middle name?” He looked confused. “The W in your middle name. You’re Joseph W. Dixon, right? Oh, never mind. Were you aware of my husband—of his, all of this—when you met me today?” I was angry and addled, but my run through the chilly night had cleared my senses.
“I don’t find it my place to judge a man’s proclivities.”
…MA in Creative Professional Writing, lives in the mountains of Ouray, Colorado. She writes at the end of her family’s dining table with a pup at her feet and a cat on her lap.
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