Secret Life, Secret Death: Going Down in Flames in Bootlegging and Prositution in Capone's Chicago and Wisconsin

Genevieve Davis takes you along on a personal odyssey as she enters the unglamorized world of Prohibition and mobsters to discover the secret life her grandmother led in the Roaring 20's of Chicago. A "haunting story" [Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune] evoking 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] Told with candor and humor, along with a handful of recipes, many pictures and snippets of the author's unorthodox life as a rambunctious historical reenactor and artist.

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.

"Davis's grandmother had a colorful, turbulent,mobster-crossed and altogether extraordinary life." [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.

The book delves into the same story in much greater detail. Inside you will also find many, many illustrations, including new snapshots from her grandmother's photo album.