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Inspired by a True Story
Author Self-Published
April 2023
On Sale: April 4, 2023
Featuring: Tempa; Belle
419 pages
Kindle: B0BT2X7YM6
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Romance | Women's Fiction
Nevada’s gold country, 1901
No longer young or fresh, Tempa is staring face to face with the whore’s unholy trinity: alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide. While her best friend, Belle, has chosen laudanum, Tempa finds escape in literature, which she shares with the illiterate prostitutes in a book club-like setting at the cribs. Forced into prostitution as a girl after losing her family to yellow fever, Tempa also retains a sense of self-worth by using her knowledge of herbs to heal others.
When she nurses Henry—a good-natured, young German immigrant on the run from a man who has reason to want him dead—Tempa sees a future she longs for but cannot allow herself to claim. So when the noose tightens around Henry’s neck, she ransoms her life for his.
At once a sweeping love story and a harrowing account of the harshness of the American Old West, DESERT PHOENIX is the tale of a middle-aged, crib prostitute who gains an unlikely ally in her struggle for physical and emotional survival. Based on local history and family stories passed down from Bruggeman’s grandfather, this engaging and evocative novel for fans of Kristin Hannah and Kate Quinn interweaves Tempa’s rise from the ashes of her old life with Henry’s turbulent passage into manhood.
*Contains mature themes, including non-graphic suicide and sexual assualt.
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