title: Silverheels Mountain of Love
author: Gibson, Karen Ann
description: This novel is the compelling fictional story based on a compilation of the many legends of the beautiful, tantalizing, kind, and extraordinary woman who lived and performed in Park County, Colorado, specifically around the year of 1861. The now ghost town it is centered in was once very much the gun-toting, overwhelmingly exciting, overnight sensation of Buckskin Joe's, where a gold strike was discovered in 1859 by Joseph Higginbotham. While much is not known of the incredible woman that they named Silverheels after the dance slippers she then wore, she came to the town and immediately swept everyone off their feet with her great beauty, talent, and extreme generosity. Smallpox tragically hit the then booming area that she became famous in throughout that area and all of Colorado, plus several states around. Many, many fled the area in panic, fear, great hurry, and much distress. But Silverheels stayed on against much advice and at great and incredible personal risk to help and lovingly tend to those stricken with smallpox who could not or did not want to leave. Later, after being stricken with the pox herself in real life, she disappears and was never seen again. But the author has an idea of what happened to her and has created a novel about her based on legend and imagination that includes an incredible and haunting love story, mystery and murder, faith, and the compelling suffering, courage, and deep convictions of survival of those stricken with smallpox during that time and location.