Karen Memory

Author’s Note

Rapid City is not any one real place but a sort of Ur-place, a compilation derived of elements of historic Portland, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Madame Damnable is inspired by but not in any factual way based upon Seattle’s legendary real Mother Damnable, Mary Ann Conklin (1821–1873), who is supposed to have run a city courthouse downstairs and a brothel upstairs in the same house on King Street.

The character of Merry Lee is very loosely based upon the exploits of heroic women such as San Francisco’s Tye Leung Schulze (1887–1972), who was incidentally also the first Chinese woman to cast a ballot in North America, many of them of Asian heritage, who did what they could to help their “frail sisters” who were exploited, enslaved, and legislated against.

U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves (1838–1910) was a real person and is believed by some historians of popular culture to have been the model for the Lone Ranger. The real Bass Reeves, to my knowledge, never made it that far northwest of the Indian Territory — but he did have a luxuriant mustache and a truly impressive number of children.

Tomoatooah, I am sad to say, is entirely a figment of my own imagination.

Brookfield, Massachusetts

10 May 2014