The Forgotten Madams Who Inspired My Romance Novel
I never expected a historic brothel, two infamous madams, and a forgotten red-light district to inspire one of my most sensual stories.
From the moment the idea arrived, Destination Bordello refused to let me go. Long before I published romance, the seeds of this tale were already taking root. My creative side must have known that one day I would use the information. That day has arrived.
Here’s the hidden history behind the novel.
The Story Behind Destination Bordello
In 2015, I moved to the Atlantic coast, where history surrounded me. I lived north of St. Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565, and was the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin. My distinct island home was the only place in the United States where eight separate national flags have flown. I lived then, by the river, home of an infamous port and marina.
When I moved to the island, I had heard folklore about brothels there. The tales centered on a street in the original city named for them, Ladies Promenade. With my sexual interest piqued, I tried to document that brothels existed here at the turn of the 19th century. If they did, I wanted to locate exact information about them.
As both a sexuality professional and romance author, I became fascinated by the hidden stories of intimacy, survival, and power woven through America’s red-light districts.
Discovering Cora Crane
I began my research at the local museum, and my efforts turned up nothing. A personal diary or letters were what I hoped to find, but none existed there. However, when I broadened my search to the city of Jacksonville, Florida, surprising information came to light.
That search introduced me to the Grand Madame of Jacksonville: Cora Crane. In 1895 Cora bought a boarding house in Jacksonville and opened it as a bordello and a nightclub called Hotel de Dream. During a visit to Jacksonville in 1896, Stephen Crane, author of The Red Badge of Courage, met Cora.
She became his lover and then his common-law wife. His work led him to Europe, and Cora closed the bordello to travel with him. While in England, they enjoyed their time with writer friends: H. G. Wells, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad. Crane died in 1900, leaving Cora, the heir to his estate. She returned to Jacksonville in 1903 and opened a five-star bordello called The Court.
When the new bordello opened, it helped build the economy of Jacksonville after the Great Fire of 1901. The fire devastated hundreds of downtown blocks but spared the brothels in the red-light district. As a personal aside, my husband’s grandmother wrote in her journal about witnessing the fire.
With the transportation corridors of the Jacksonville port and the train station located two blocks away, Cora entertained the wealthy snowbirds visiting the area. The city of Jacksonville’s financial recovery post-fire was often attributed to Cora Crane’s new business. She remained revered for her economic savvy and the famous company she kept.
Since Cora’s building did not exist in Jacksonville today, I searched for pictures of old brothels and bordellos of that timeframe. That effort sparked a memory.
The Brothel That Stayed With Me
I had visited a brothel in Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1988, during a road trip west across the United States. The bed-and-breakfast where I stayed suggested a unique dinner location called Miss Laura’s Restaurant. To my surprise, the United States’ only bordello on the National Register of Historic Places housed the restaurant. It was initially named Miss Laura’s Social Club for the madam of the day, Laura Ziegler. Now the building, refurbished to its original style and elegance showcasing its bordello history, serves as Miss Laura’s Brothel Museum.
As I stepped into the building, my imagination wandered into the 1903 bordello halls. It wasn’t hard to do. A commemorative plaque over each door named the woman who worked the room. Heavy velvet drapes graced the windows. I found myself in the halls, standing by the doors, eavesdropping on what occurred inside. Whispers of lust and longing filled me and remained captive in my mind until now. This history seeped out as the Destination Bordello story came forward.
It amazed me that Cora Taylor Crane (The Scandalous Mrs. Cora Crane) and Laura Ziegler (Queen of the Row) were on similar paths in different parts of the United States. Each opened the crown jewel of their red-light row in their respective towns in 1903. And one hundred and fifteen years later their experiences would be center stage, creating a story idea.
My continued research allowed me to find obstacles and complications in my story plot. During the period of brothel growth, I discovered many laws that regulated legal prostitution. These laws ranged from health code requirements to tax collection and documentation for brothels, politics of the time. I found a mayoral candidate of Jacksonville who won his election with a pro-prostitution platform. Not surprisingly, he focused on the single sailors and railroad workers of the day, believing prostitution presented a safety valve for the community. I wove these ideas into the story series.
There’s something irresistible about places that hold secrets, especially when those secrets involve desire, reinvention, and forbidden longing.
How History Became Fiction
Laura Ziegler and Cora Crane have become inspirations in my writing life. These two women celebrated the spirit of self-care in the time they lived. And like them, I took what my muse provided and worked it. I drew from their life stories. Understanding that historical court documents and government records, letters, diaries, and personal papers contain exciting facts of the day, I linked them to Destination Bordello’s main characters, Laney Baynes and Carlton Jarvis.
My plan to spark an idea for a contemporary brothel story had worked. Destination Bordello, while not historical writing, resulted from my research into the past. One hundred and twenty-three years later, my story exists.
Destination Bordello was born from real places, real scandals, and the lingering echoes of the women history tried to forget.
And now Laney and Carlton are ready to invite you into the world that history whispered to me first.
About Destination Bordello
A sensual contemporary romance inspired by the hidden history of America’s bordellos, where desire, legacy, and scandal collide.
Check out my Free Story.
I teach desire for a living.
So why can’t I feel my own anymore?
After delivering the biggest keynote of my career, I should be celebrating. Instead, my business partner tells me I’m overworked, undersexed, and impossible to be around. I laugh it off—until I run into Ace, my longtime lover, and discover I somehow let five months slip by without contacting him.
Five months.
The worst part? The memories are there…but the feelings aren’t.
The chemistry that once lit me on fire now feels distant, muted, wrong. As I wander Jacksonville’s arts district searching for clarity, strange moments begin pulling at me—an old sex-club pin, provocative artwork, landscapes that seem to breathe with longing, and a mysterious photographer whose work reaches places inside me I can barely access anymore.
Something is happening to me.
To my body.
To my creativity.
To the woman I thought I understood.
And for the first time in my life, I’m terrified I may never find my way back to myself.
Shadows & Silhouettes: Before He Saw Me is a sensual, introspective prequel to Shadows & Silhouettes: Cards of Passion, and features themes of emotional unraveling, sexuality and creativity, body disconnect, artistic awakening, and the first crack in Liv Thornton’s carefully controlled world.
