Second Lives: A Novel of the Gilded Age [Hardcover]

Richard S. Wheeler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1997

Set against the backdrop of 1880s Denver, a colorful novel relates the experiences of Homer Peabody, a hapless bachelor lawyer; Cornelia Kimbrough, who is trapped in a miserable marriage to a tycoon; Dixie Ball, a farm girl who strikes it rich, and Yves Poulenc, a young poet.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

YA?During the late 1880s, the West was no longer the sole provenance of cowboys and ranchers. Denver bustled with wealthy merchants and mining magnates as well as poor serving girls and cleaning women. Six characters who never attain their original goals but who receive a second chance are depicted here. Cornelia realizes her marriage will never be a happy one, though she finds fulfillment through her career; Yves changes from a consumptive poet to a newspaper proofreader; and bachelor Homer comes to terms with his lackluster performance as an attorney. These ordinary people are the ones who formed the backbone of America and whose lives, when closely examined, provide a window into the history of that time period. There is no "happily ever after" ending to this title, though readers are left with a richer understanding of the people involved in the settlement of the West.?Pam Spencer, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Denver in the 1880s was a city of opportunity and dashed hopes. Lorenzo Carthage fit the pattern: he made his million in silver and then lost it to greed and lawsuits. His salvation may be Dixie Cotton, whose miner husband died of pneumonia. Meanwhile, Cornelia Kimbrough hires a detective to help her escape a loveless marriage to one of Denver's richest tycoons, and Yves Poulenc, a poet with consumption, has come to Denver to die in a sanatorium. Wheeler has written another wonderfully involving pageant of the West. His multilayered plot replicates a time and place while never resorting to cliches or one-dimensional characters. The result is a very humanistic drama in which readers encounter lives not unlike their own. The best people are driven by a desire for love, comfort, and a chance to make an impression on the world they leave behind. Amazingly, so are the worst people. Fine reading for fans of western drama. Wes Lukowsky

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 348 pages
• Publisher: Forge; 1st edition (May 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312863330
• ISBN-13: 978-0312863333
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,494,443 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard Wheeler began a late-in-life career as a novelist at age fifty, and by his seventy-fifth year had written seventy novels. He began life as a newsman and later became a book editor, but turned to fiction full time in 1985.

He started by writing traditional westerns but soon was writing large-scale historical novels and then biographical novels. In recent years he has been writing mysteries as well, some as Axel Brand. His Lieutenant Joe Sonntag series occurs in 1940s Milwaukee, and focuses on life in a big, smoky industrial city just after World War Two.

He has won numerous awards, including the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in the literature of the American West, and also six Spur Awards from Western Writers of America. He has received more Spur Awards than any other living author.

He grew up in Wisconsin and migrated West, holding newspaper jobs in Phoenix, Oakland, Carson City, and Billings. His wife, Sue Hart, is an English professor at Montana State University in Billings.

He has been focusing more and more on biographical novels. One of these, published in March, 2010, is called Snowbound, and is about the explorer John C. Fremont's tragic fourth expedition. It won a Spur Award.


For a quarter of a century he's largely made his living from writing fiction. That reality astonishes him. In his mid-seventies now, he is still dreaming up new stories.

Note: There are other Richard Wheelers writing books. One is an historian of the Civil War, and another writes histories of the Marine Corps, and another is a social scientist. Richard S. Wheeler is the novelist.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Never give up, January 25, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Second Lives (Mass Market Paperback)

This one was from Wheeler's heart, though it began as an idea about entwined storylines in one city, Denver, at a time when the fortunes of folks were as much tosssed about by fate as by intention and skill -- something like Seattle today.

One character, Lorenzo the Magnificent, is loosely based on the Emperor Norton of San Francisco, an historical person famous enough to have his own website. Lorenzo, like Norton, hit bonanzas but was always broken back to scratch by simple mistakes and bad luck, until he simply gave up on reality and insisted he was a fabulous millionaire though he had to depend on handouts for his food, clothing and shelter. His flair and good will were so welcome that even one of his victims, a partner in a silver mine who had been reduced to working as a parlormaid, takes him into her embrace. When she ends up happily running a beanery, she makes room for him in her life.

An over-romantic young consumptive poet is cured in spite of himself (Denver air was reputed to be curative in those days) and ends up succeeding at a job in spite of himself. Not all second lives are successful. One fun-loving barmaid gets repeated chances to pull herself away from drink and drugs, but doesn't take them. She defines herself as defiant and stubbornly pays the consequences. An old failing lawyer ends up finding a life through a young society woman desperate for a divorce, and she finds a life as well.

These stories don't tie together, though the characters pass each other on the street and lunch at the same fancy place when they can afford it. Wheeler subtly shifts his rhetoric to suit the milieu and vocabulary of each set of characters, which can confuse some readers into thinking they are all Wheeler's thoughts instead of realizing that the author is the piano player rather than the music. This is more sophisticated and researched than most genre books -- it might not belong in the category.

When my mother was dying of blood cancer (painless but slow), she kept asking me to find her books that would be absorbing and entertaining enough that she could just sink into that other world and forget her own problems. Librarians I consulted said, "No one writes that kind of book anymore." But "Second Lives" was exactly the kind of of story my mother wanted to read: no violence, not much sex, just absorbing characters surviving reverses, some unpredictable plot twists, some social insights, and a few thoughts about human life and dying. Not for teenagers.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars intelligent, absorbing storytelling at its best, April 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Second Lives: A Novel of the Gilded Age (Hardcover)

Second Lives is not the typical Western fare. Superbly written, this book is much more character driven than most other offerings from this genre. Incident is not the major emphasis. Here, instead, are very real people who shift and change as a result of forces both within and outside of themselves. Those readers who appreciate fine writing, sharply delineated characters, and a novel that causes the reader to truly care about its players will find much to admire here. Each person in the book is pushed into examining his or her existence, and the choices necessary to achieve some sort of fulfillment. Most of the characters seem to have arrived at a rapproachement with themselves, and with the vicissitudes of life by the novels end. The title here suggests a certain rite of passage in which the old rules and landmarks these characters used to guide their existence no longer work. It is now up to these people to fashion a future based upon the abiding lessons that experience has painfully taught them.

I read this selection for a genre fiction class I have in a graduate Library Science program, and this is the best book I've run across during the course of my assignments. Based upon the evidence of what I have just read, Richard S. Wheeler is one very fine writer. Quite frankly, I did not anticipate such a richly rewarding reading experience.

5.0 out of 5 stars Epic and Inspiring, January 8, 2010

By 

Therese L. Arkenberg (Wisconsin, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Second Lives: A Novel of the Gilded Age (Paperback)

"Second Lives" tells the stories of multipe characters whose plans, for one reason or another, have been waylaid, their dreams destroyed, and who are left to build something from what is left. For the most part, individual plotlines never interact, which threw me at first but in the end wasn't a significant problem (it would be difficult, upon relection, for most of the characters to even meet unless the author resorted to extreme coincidence). Some end happily, but not all of them, and none ended quite the way I expected. All the same, every event, every turn, every step forward or back, is perfectly fitting with character and theme. Wheeler writes with obvious compassion for all of his characters, and in the end, these are stories about disappointment but not disillusion, in which only those who give up hope entirely ever truly fail.