The Gillett Public Library will host Genevieve Davis, author of “Secret Life, Secret Death,” for an author talk at 10 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 1.
“Secret Life, Secret Death” is a nonfiction mystery in which Davis unravels the true story of a young mother who fell into crime in Chicago in the Roaring ’20s and later ran a shady hotel in Wisconsin during the Depression. The author leads readers through the unglamorized underworld of gangsters in Wisconsin and Chicago as she hunts down the family secret.
Davis spent 10 years researching the story of her grandmother’s hidden life in crime. Davis began with just a handful of facts, the most telling being the story her father told her that when he was 5 years old, his mother took him to Big Jim Colosimo’s funeral in Chicago, a gangster who had been shot by his own lieutenant.
Some years after her father’s death, Davis found a chapter of a book on Chicago crime devoted to Colosimo. She continued doggedly on the trail of her family’s black sheep, following her grandmother’s story from Philadelphia to Chicago to northern Wisconsin. There her grandmother ran a shady hotel until she died under mysterious circumstances.
With its themes of Wisconsin history, trafficking, alcoholism and the lethal burden of family secrets carried into the present, the book provides a tale that educates and provokes.
Davis also produced and directed “Secret Life, Secret Death,” a film named Best Art Film at Indie Fest U.S.A. To see the trailer, clips and reviews or to purchase the book or DVD, visit www.secretlifesecretdeath.com.
This event is co-sponsored by the Gillett Public Library and the Gillett Area Historical Society.
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