Upstairs Girls: Prostitution in the American West

Behind the Velvet Curtain: The Untold Stories of Western Prostitution

A raw, riveting look into the women who shaped the Old West—one saloon at a time.

Discover the hidden history of the American West through the eyes of its most controversial women. In Upstairs Girls, award-winning historian Michael Rutter dives deep into the lives, struggles, and resilience of prostitutes, madams, and trafficked women during the boomtown days of frontier America.

• Eye-opening profiles of famous and forgotten women—from Calamity Jane to Rosa May
• A clear breakdown of the prostitution hierarchy: parlor girls, crib girls, and streetwalkers
• An unflinching examination of the Chinese sex trade and slavery
• Real-life vignettes that are tragic, tender, and at times, darkly humorous
• A rich historical lens on gender, labor, morality, and survival in the untamed West

"Upstairs Girls is a realistic look at the convention of prostitution. The vignettes are up close and personal."
—Gary Frazier, Brigham Young University, Utah

Upstairs Girls is both a cultural exposé and a human portrait gallery, perfect for fans of women's history, Western lore, or anyone curious about the lives lived behind brothel doors.

Michael Rutter has authored or co-authored forty books and textbooks—and written over 700 articles for magazines, journals, and newspapers. His most recent publications include Upstairs Girls: Prostitution in the American West, Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the American West, Wild Bunch Women, and Outlaw Tales of Utah. Michael is a passionate historian and a devoted outdoorsman. He is also an award-winning author, having won the Ben Franklin Award for Outdoor Writing and also the Rocky Mountain Book Publishers Award. His essay on fly fishing placed first in a writing contest at Yale University. In the summer, he travels extensively around the western United States doing research. He lives in Orem, Utah, with his wife, Shari, two cats, and a spoiled Turkish Akbash named Starfish. In the winter, he teaches advanced writing at Brigham Young University.

Phillip A. Snyder is Associate Professor of English at Brigham Young University. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and specializes in contemporary British and American literature, Western Studies, and autobiography.