A Diary by

Victims of Love

Banished in 1914 to Steamboat Springs, Colorado

A novel by Ken Proper

Fly fishing was therapy for a young Brit banished in 1914 to a booming, small, mountain town in western Colorado. Julius Brandon found it as a sort of mental house cleaning. He felt Henry David Thoreau’s quote described it best, “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”

Julius was banished for a series of indiscretions with his mother’s female estate staff and his adventures followed a rocky path to possible redemption. Unknowingly, he rented a house next to a brothel and temptations thrived. He bumbled, like a bee buzzing through life, accidentally managed to briefly get away and found moral deliverance perhaps more important than carnal desires.

Julius did fall in love. Corina Engelhart, also a British immigrant, was fresh from a tuberculosis sanitarium in Switzerland. An adult woman and formerly a child of the Victorian Era, Corina was hell bent on setting women’s freedom of speech and choice in motion.

An unlikely pair, they traveled reluctantly together though emotional peaks and valleys to an unknown destination in a brave new world. All of humanity stared at the carnage of the First World War, the plague of tuberculosis and the continued division of societies. They found that the tragedy of love was not death or separation. The tragedy of love was indifference.

A Diary by Victims of Love Banished in 1914 to Steamboat Springs, Colorado shows a succinct taste of an era with words and archival photographs. The hardcover fictional novel, written in diary format, romps through the history and social upheaval of the early 20^th Century. Available for purchase at local bookstores and KenProperBooks.com for $34.99 and $5 shipping.

https://www.KenProperBooks.com