Secret Life, Secret Death

The true story of a young mother, who fell into bootlegging and worse in Gangland Chicago in the Roaring 20s. To escape, she sent her boy away and fled to northern Wisconsin, where she ran a shady hotel, until her death under suspicious circumstances. Now her granddaughter takes you along for the ride as she hunts down the family secret. A "haunting story." [Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune] This true story evokes the toll exacted on an ordinary woman and her young son, "caught in the web of Chicago's crime-ridden sin streets and the no-so-pastoral North Woods of Wisconsin." [Richard Lindberg] With 175 historic photos, the tale tells a woman's story within the historic context of the corruption in Chicago, bootlegging during Prohibition and crime up in No-Man's Land northern Wisconsin. When Genevieve Davis's father was 5 years old, his mother took him to the funeral of vice lord Big Jim Colosimo. The book is based on Davis's 10 year, painstaking research project to find out how her Grandmother mother and Dad got mixed up in Colosimo's world. Along the way you'll run into Al Capone, Big Jim Colosimo and John Dillinger. "A haunting story. . . Davis's grandmother had a colorful, turbulent, mobster-crossed and altogether extraordinary life." Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune] Genevieve Davis shares some of her own adventures and misadventures as a researcher, historical re-enactor and professional artist, as she ferrets out the complex, intertwined stories of her Grandmother, crooks like Big Jim Colosimo, Al Capone and Johnny Torrio, local officials and her Grandmother's men friends and their families. The research project was also the source for the documentary film, SECRET LIFE, SECRET DEATH, produced and directed by Genevieve Davis, available at www.secretlifesecretdeath.com The film was described as "visually stunning" in the Chicago Tribune and "innovative and dazzling" by the Gene Siskel Film Center.