By Amy Gillentine
This winter, travel in the footsteps of a woman who braved the harshness of the Rocky Mountains in the 1800s, visit a haunted hotel, experience Denver as seen through the eyes of James Michener, and explore Colorado just like Jack Kerouac.
Or you can read another epic horror novel partially set in the town of Boulder, experience the upheaval from the deliberate flooding of a town, or discover the tragic life of a silver baron’s wife.
During the Winter Adult Reading Program at Pikes Peak Library District (PPLD), we invite you to view Colorado through the eyes of authors who created stories — both real and imagined — set in the Centennial State. This year’s program runs from Jan. 1 – Feb. 28.
HOW TO PLAY
Register online with the Beanstack app starting Jan. 1, and at any Library location starting Jan. 2. Log 30 days of reading and activities from Jan. 1 - Feb. 28 to earn this year’s limited-edition mug and a certificate for a dessert from Crumbl®. Register by Thu., Jan. 15, and you will be entered to win a four-pack of Crumbl® cookies every week for a year! Read any books you choose, including these books with Colorado connections.
Travel to Estes Park and visit the Stanley Hotel, the inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining and Doctor Sleep (the haunted hotel also appears briefly in Billy Summers). The Stanley, as locals call it, has a storied history of ghostly visitations, and hotel tours are available. The stately inn rests in the foothills of Rocky Mountain National Park, where you can also follow in the footsteps of Isabella Bird. Bird was an outspoken woman from England who traveled more than 800 miles into the Rockies in 1873 and lived in a two-room cabin in what is now Estes Park. Her tales of life in the Rockies, sent in letters to her sister, led to her fourth and most famous book, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. There, she met Rocky Mountain Jim, a textbook outlaw with one eye and a love of both poetry and violence. The book’s popularity earned Bird a place as the first woman to become a member of the Royal Geological Society in England.
James Michener’s epic novel, Centennial, takes place in the plains of northeast Colorado. The tome covers several generations in a fictional town in Weld County — tracing lore from prehistory to the 1970s. Michener lived in Greeley for a time, and details in the book show that the town is located at the junction of the South Platte and Cache La Poudre rivers. Visitors can explore both rivers and learn more about the history that shaped the novel.
In On the Road, Jack Kerouac details his trip to Larimer Square in Denver, time spent watching a Colorado baseball game, and his visit to the opera Fidelio at the Central City Opera. After selling his first novel, he bought a house in Lakewood, where he once visited Lakeside Amusement Park. Like Kerouac, you can visit all three locations, but you will need to wait until summer for the amusement park, which is still in operation today.
Returning to the King multiverse, The Stand, an epic horror novel that spans 900 pages, is partially set in Boulder where King lived for a time. The city becomes a refuge in the fight for good against evil in the days after a pandemic wipes out more than 98 percent of the population. Visit Boulder and imagine what it would be like without electricity, very few people and with winter setting in, while Randall Flagg, the novel's villain, plots in Las Vegas.
Go as a River is a national best seller by Shelly Read, who once resided in Colorado Springs. Readers may recognize this title from PPLD’s 2024 All Pikes Peak Reads program where we chose it as our featured book. The novel is set at a time when the town of Iola was flooded to create the Blue Mesa Reservoir in Gunnison. The fictional families must abandon their homes and jobs to make new lives elsewhere. Gunnison is home to the real-world Blue Mesa Reservoir, serving as a recreational area as well as a source of water for the city.
Visitors to Leadville can tour Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor’s cabin or visit the Tabor Opera House, built by her husband, silver baron Horace “H.A.W.” Tabor. The story in The Silver Baron’s Wife by Donna Baier Stein, starts when Baby Doe met Tabor. Despite both being married, they fell in love, divorced their spouses — quite the scandal in the 1800s — and married. The two lived a glamorous life until the nation moved to the gold standard. When Tabor died, Baby Doe was left with nothing but a small cabin and the Matchless Mine, a silver mine she was convinced would bring back her fortune.
PPLD’s Winter Adult Reading Program serves to create incentives to read, reflect, and learn about the real history and the invented tales that have drawn authors to its plains, mountain tops, and cities for more than 150 years.
A sampling of other books with Colorado settings:
- The Song of the Lark
by Willa Cather (fiction) - The Tie that Binds
by Kent Haruf (fiction) - Plainsong
by Kent Haruf (fiction) - The Stranger Beside Me
by Ann Rule (autobiographical true crime) - Bellwether
by Connie Willis (science fiction) - The Dog Stars
by Peter Heller (dystopian) - Father and I Were Ranchers
by Ralph Moody (nonfiction, memoir) - Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West
by Dorothy Wickenden (nonfiction) - Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore
by Matthew J. Sullivan (mystery)
