Anne M. Conrad
Books and Publications
Storytelling is the heart of my writing. If I am documenting local history, chatting about forgotten places, or showcasing the people who captured my imagination, I want to keep telling those stories. It was bred into me by my father, who could both write and tell incredible and sometimes tall tales.
This page features two books rooted in lived experiences in real places. Cañon City, my visual history of one of Colorado’s most fascinating, influential and lively places and The Emerald Hotel written by my father M.A. Starner which reflects his love of adventure, observation and rich memories.
Together these books represent a shared appreciation for place, history and the stories worth telling.
From its early days as a frontier settlement, to its role in modern Colorado history, Cañon City has played a rich and unique part in the American West.
Sitting in the heart of Fremont County, Cañon City developed amid remarkable geological diversity and was connected to some of the earliest oil discoveries in the United States. Important mining operations and archaeological discoveries including dinosaur remains made the area a remarkable backdrop to the impressive Royal Gorge Bridge, which spans the Arkansas River 1,053 feet below; one of Colorado’s most recognized and celebrated engineering landmarks.
With a temperate climate and long growing seasons, Cañon City had long supported agriculture with vast orchards still celebrated with the annual Blossom Festival to flower farms, a lively 4-H presence and farming all through the area. The town also served as a vital commercial hub supplying produce and goods to communities throughout the region.
As the silent film industry began to catch on, Cañon City was a vital part of the exciting new wave of entertainment and the scene to hundreds of motion pictures in those early days. Cañon City hosted actors from Tom Mix, Charles Bronson, Goldie Hawn and “The Duke,” John Wayne and more.
Cañon City’s history also reflects the harsh realities of the West, and was the home to Colorado’s first territorial prison, an institution that continues to shape the region today with numerous prison facilities in the area.
The good, the bad, and the ugly of Cañon City’s past is all laid bare in the richly illustrated look at the industries, events and hardy people that shaped one of Colorado’s most historically significant communities.
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Images of America Series
Cañon City
By Anne Marlowe Conrad
Spanning more than a century and three generations of ambition, The Emerald Hotel is rooted in the unforgiving beauty of southern Africa, where emeralds promise salvation but always at a fierce price.
In 1901 enslaved Musi, kills her Arab owner and frees her father only to lose him moments later. Emeralds scattered in the sand, around have caused her nothing but suffering and pain. To Musi, the stones are cursed but if she can bury them with her father, she believes he will enter the afterlife rich at last, beyond the reach of chains and a cruel life.
In 1949, Calvin Burns chases rumors of lost emeralds up the remote Luangwa River. For Calvin, the represents financial security, a means to build his hotel in America and a new life with the woman he loves. It seems Africa, however, knows all who search for riches in her borders may not live to find them.
The past resurfaces violently in 2006 when Americans Tom Dugan and Gabe Adams are running for their lives weighed down by thirty pounds of emeralds and the certainty they are being hunted. Colonel Zima has sent his finest trackers, and in the wilderness along the Luangwa, survival demands a reckoning.
Inspired by real gem-hunting expeditions in Zambia and stories gathered around warm and beckoning braai fires, along the Luangwa River, The Emerald Hotel blends adventure, history, and moral consequence into a powerful novel about legacy, greed and the price of dreams buried in the sand.
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Daughter's Note:
This book, a testament to our father Marlowe A. Starner’s love of adventure, storytelling, and the places that captured his imagination. The Emerald Hotel grew from his time gem-hunting in Zambia and from the stories he and his friends told around the glow of braai fires, over warm bourbon and gentle breezes along the banks of the Luangwa River.
After his passing, republishing this novel has become a labor of love. My sister Alissa and I hope new readers will discover not only a compelling story, but also the spirit of courage, discovery, brave adventure seeking, and respect for history that shaped his life and work.
This book is shared in his memory, so that his voice and the journeys that inspired it may continue.
Anne Marlowe Conrad
About the Author:
Al Starner wrote The Emerald Hotel following a gem-hunting adventure in Zambia, Africa, an experience first chronicled in Rock & Gem Magazine. A lifelong gem and mineral collector, Starner is also a big-game hunter, pilot, and skydiver whose work has appeared in Soldier of Fortune and Flying Magazine. Much of the material for The Emerald Hotel was gathered firsthand around campfires in southern Africa and along the shores of the great Luangwa River, where stories, history, and legend still linger in the dark.