Madam Millie: Bordellos from Silver City to Ketchikan - Hardcover

Evans, Max

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826327826 ISBN 13: 9780826327826

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press, 2002

Synopsis

Mildred Clark Cusey was a whore, a madam, an entrepreneur, and above all, a survivor. The story of Silver City Millie, as she referred to herself, is the story of one woman's personal tragedies and triumphs as an orphan, a Harvey Girl waitress on the Santa Fe railroad, a prostitute with innumerable paramours, and a highly successful bordello businesswoman. Millie broke the mold in so many ways, and yet her life's story of survival was not unlike that of thousands of women who went West only to find that their most valuable assets were their physical beauty and their personality. Petite at five feet tall with piercing blue eyes, Millie captured men's attention by her very essence and her unmistakable joie de vivre.

Born to Italian immigrant parents near Kansas City, she and her sister were orphaned early and separated from each other. Millie learned hard lessons on the streets, but she never gave up and she vowed to protect and support her ailing older sister. Caught in a domestic squabble in her foster home, Millie wound up in juvenile court with Harry Truman as her judge. This would be only the first of many brushes in her life with prominent politicians.

When physicians diagnosed her sister with tuberculosis and recommended she move West to a Catholic home in Deming, New Mexico, Millie moved with her. Expenses ran high and after a brief stint waiting tables as a Harvey Girl, Millie found that her meager tips could easily be augmented by turning tricks. Thus, out of financial need and devotion to her sister, Mildred Cusey turned to a life of prostitution and a career at which she soon excelled and became both rich and famous.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Madam Millie contains sordid details and frank language that will make many readers blush. It is unvarnished language, as recorded directly from Millie by Max Evans over a period of almost twenty years. It presents a complete picture of the business of prostitution as it was practiced in the west from the late 1920s to the mid 1970s, told by the most successful madam in the business.

About the Author:

Max Evans, the author of Bluefeather Fellini, The Rounders, The Hi Lo Country, and twenty-two other books, lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He received the Owen Wister Award for lifelong contributions to the field of western literature from the Western Writers of America.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0826327826
• ISBN 13: 9780826327826
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 344