The Broken Rose

Murder in the Alaskan Wilderness

This is the entire novel based on a murder in McCarthy Alaska in 1918. The short story was published under the name Murder of the McCarthy Madam. This is an historical fiction built around the incident. Gus murders Rose and runs to Russia. But why, and what were they doing in Alaska in the second decade of the Twentieth Century? Gus Priesner is a coal miner from the Ruhr Valley. A Prussian who served in the Kaiser’s Navy in 1900, he finds his way to Canada prior to World War I. Enroute to the Klondike, he meets a Second Boer War veteran, Grumble Brantley, changes direction, and mines the copper of the remote Alaskan wilderness. A strike at the mine changes his focus again, and with the help of “Dr. Phineas Titsworth,” Gus becomes a druggist, dispensing medicinal alcohol during Prohibition. Rose Silberg is a Long Island socialite, dumped by a philandering husband, who resolves to find her fortune in the wide-open town of McCarthy, Alaska. How she leaves a life of ease and travels across the country is a hilarious story. She becomes the best and most expensive madam in Alaska. Rose and Gus are thrown together by an influenza quarantine in 1918. He needs her money for furs. She needs her money to “go home.” Gus runs to Russia. This story tells what happened to McCarthy Rose.