The Broken Rose

What were they doing in Alaska in the second decade of the 20th century? Gus Priesner, a Prussian coal miner from the Ruhr Valley and a former sailor in the Kaiser’s Navy, arrives in Canada just before World War I. Bound for the Klondike, he changes course after meeting a grizzled Boer War veteran and instead finds work as a copper miner in the remote wilderness of Alaska. When a strike shuts the mine down, Gus reinvents himself as a druggist—dispensing “medicinal” alcohol in defiance of Prohibition. Rose Silberg is a Long Island socialite turned adventurer who chases fortune to the raw frontier town of McCarthy, Alaska, near the Kennecott Copper Company mine. She succeeds beyond all expectations—becoming the most expensive madam in the territory. Their paths collide during the deadly influenza quarantine of 1918. Trapped together, tensions rise: Gus needs money to secure a mysterious shipment; Rose needs hers to buy her way back to Long Island. When the quarantine lifts, desperation erupts into violence. Rose ends up dead. Gus vanishes—into Russia. This is the story of what happened to McCarthy Rose.