Along Wyoming Street houses of prostitution thrived, the lavish Dumas Brothel and Venus Alley, where women plied their trade in thin-framed cribs, a line of double-decked openings attached to the back wall of buildings, fronted by a curtain, a single lightbulb over each entrance. (132)
Shann Ray: A Novel. American Copper. Lakewood, Colorado: Unbridled Books, 2015.
Ray’s debut novel, American Copper, is a love song to America revealing the radiant and profound life of Evelynne Lowry, a woman who transcends the national myth of regeneration through violence. American Copper won the Foreword Book of the Year Readers’ Choice Award and the Western Writers of America Spur Award.
While the settings in American Copper clearly reference actual locales, it is understood that the book—including its places—is ultimately the product of the author’s imagination. The intent of this literary map is to enrich the reading experience by interpreting those places, not to render them literally or definitively.
Watch Shann Ray’s 2013 TEDxSpokane talk, The Greatest Work of Art is to Love Someone.