The Gilded Cage: A Novel of Chicago - Paperback

by Judy Alter (Author)

Born to society and a life of privilege, Bertha Honoré married Potter Palmer, a wealthy entrepreneur who called her Cissy. Neither dreamed the direction the other's life would take. He built the Palmer House Hotel, still famed today, and became one of the major robber barons of the city, giving generously to causes of which he approved. She put philanthropy into words, going into shanty neighborhoods, inviting factory girls to her home, working at Jane Addams' settlement Hull House, supporting women's causes. It was a time of tremendous change and conflict in Chicago as the city struggled to put its swamp-water beginnings behind it and become a leading urban center. A time of the Great Fire of 1871, the Haymarket Riots, and the triumph of the Columbian Exposition. Potter and Cissy handled these events in diverse ways. Fascinating characters people these pages along with Potter and Cissy-Carter Harrison, frequent mayor of the city; Harry Collins, determined to be a loser; Henry Honoré, torn between loyalties to the South and North; Daniel Burnham, architect of the new Chicago-and many others. The Gilded Cage is a fictional exploration of the lives of these people and of the Gilded Age in Chicago history.

Author Biography

An award-winning novelist, Judy Alter is the author of several fictional biographies of women of the American West-Elizabeth Bacon Custer, Jessie Benton Frémont, Lucille Mulhall (first Wild West Show roping cowgirl), and Etta Place, the Sundance Kid's girlfriend. In the Gilded Cage she has turned her attention to the late nineteenth century in her home town, Chicago, to tell the story of the lives of Potter and Cissy Palmer, a high society couple with differing views on philanthropy and workers' right. In so doing, she chronicles the colorful history of Chicago from swampland to host for the World's Columbian Exposition, including the Great Fire, the Civil War, and the Haymarket Riot. She is also the author of six books in the Kelly O'Connell Mysteries series: Skeleton in a Dead Space, No Neighborhood for Old Women, Trouble in a Big Box, Danger Comes Home, Deception in Strange Places, and Desperate for Death, and the Blue Plate Café Mysteries-Murder at the Blue Plate Café, Murder at the Tremont House and Murder at Peacock Mansion.With the 2014 publication of The Perfect Coed, she introduced the Oak Grove Mysteries. Her work has been recognized with awards from the Western Writers of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame. She has been honored with the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement by WWA and inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame and the WWA Hall of Fame.