Minnesota's Notorious Nellie King: Wild Woman of the Closed Frontier

By Jerry Kuntz

From 1887 to 1893, the era Frederick Jackson Turner marked as the close of the American frontier, a young woman scandalized the residents of the Dakotas, Minnesota and northern Wisconsin with her fetching appearance, eccentric behavior and criminal misdeeds. Best known as Nellie King, she employed over a dozen other aliases throughout her career as fake detective, horse thief, laudanum fiend and general disturber of the dubious peace of saloons and brothels across the northern plains. She attracted sensational headlines, love-struck suitors and stray revolver shots with equal abandon; her story's Dickensian cast of characters included a hapless counterfeiter, a dashing physician, a battle-hardened magician and a determined mother. In this engaging narrative, Jerry Kuntz pieces together the clues to her true identity for the first time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Sep 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781625846761

Reviews for Minnesota's Notorious Nellie King

[nx74defiant · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Short, quick read. I like seeing the newspaper articles of the time. The book includes pictures and drawings from the time of Nellie's life. There is information of the happenings in Minnesota at that period.