The Broken Rose

Gus murders Rose and runs to Russia. What were they doing in Alaska in the second decade of the 20th Century? Gus Priesner is a coal miner from the Ruhr Valley. A Prussian who served in the Kaiser's Navy in 1900, he goes to Canada prior to World War I. Enroute to the Klondike, he meets a Boer War veteran, changes direction, and becomes a copper miner in the Alaskan wilderness. A strike at the mine changes his focus, and he becomes a druggist, dispensing medicinal alcohol during Prohibition. Rose Silberg is a Long Island socialite who resolves to find her fortune in the wide-open town of McCarthy Alaska, near the Kennecott Copper Company's mine. She does, and becomes the most expensive madam in the Alaskan Territory. Rose and Gus are thrown together by an influenza quarantine in 1918. He needs her money for an expensive shipment. She needs her money to "go home" to Long Island. The lifting of the quarantine brings the situation to a head. Gus runs to Russia. This story tells what happened to McCarthy Rose.