Finding the Bad Inn: Discovering My Family's Hidden Past

by Christy Leskovar

What began as a quest to solve a family mystery, became an adventure stretching across the globe–from Butte to Belfast to Belgium–to find the answers, with a few misadventures along the way. It is the behind-the-scenes story of how this former engineer morphed into a true-crime detective, archival archeologist, and ground-level historian, becoming a well-traveled sleuth in the process. In addition to being a fun read, it is also a great primer for anyone curious about his or her own family story. ABRIDGED EDITION. To read the unabridged Kindle book, click on the + in the formats box.

344 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 14, 2012

About the author

During a visit to my hometown in 1997, I learned shocking news: my great-grandmother had been arrested for murder. I left my engineering career to find out what happened and write a book about it. The true story of what I found out, One Night in a Bad Inn, was a 2007 High Plains Book Award finalist. My second book, Finding the Bad Inn: Discovering My Family's Hidden Past, chronicles my adventure across the globe--from Butte to Belfast to Belgium--to find out what happened.

My newest book, East of the East Side, tells the true story of a Slovenian peasant boy who becomes a concert bassoonist and must flee Paris when the First World War begins, a Viennese kitchen maid who receives money from a mysterious benefactor and off she goes to America, a scrappy undaunted gold prospector who faces off against one of the most powerful men in the state, and an outrageous girl who grows up in a Wild West saloon. They are real people. Two world wars shake the foundations of their lives taking them and their offspring from peasant farms in Austria to Imperial Vienna and the glittering Paris opera, to the American West–the fledgling Montana smelter town of East Helena, the Flathead Indian Reservation, the notorious copper metropolis of Butte, the Slavic enclave of East Butte, San Francisco, and the fertile desert of eastern Washington. It is an engaging read made richer in a well-researched historical and cultural backdrop.

I was born in Butte, Montana, grew up in Kennewick, Washington, graduated from Seattle University with degrees in mechanical engineering and French, and then joined Bechtel in Gaithersburg, Maryland. After stints in Kansas, Barcelona, and San Francisco, I transferred to an assignment in Las Vegas. I left Bechtel to write my first book and now write full time.

Reviews

[Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several years ago, based upon the high recommendation of my dear mother (and mom knows best), I cracked open the book, "One Night In a Bad Inn," by Christy Leskovar. For those who have spent years in SW Montana, Christy's last name probably is a familiar name. As a kid, Leskovar-Lincoln Mercury car dealership was one of the few names of a car dealership that I remembered. Don't ask me why, other than the name "Leskovar" is cool when it rolls off the tongue. So my mom recommended I read this book about a Bad Inn. Shortly after recommending it, I happened to stop by my mom's place to say "hi" and sitting around the table was a group of women who made up a book reading club my mom hosted. Interestingly, the guest at that particular meeting happened to be Christy Leskovar herself. After meeting the author, I quickly got a copy and began to read. I was entranced by the story line---a story about Christy's family, more specifically, her great-grandparents, her grandparents, her aunts, and uncles, etc. It was an incredible read. In fact, after I finished reading the book I told someone that if I were a history teacher in a high school in Montana, for Montana history class, one book I'd consider having as required reading was One Night In a Bad Inn. In One Night, Leskovar touches on the late 1800's in Montana, but the bulk of her writing touches on the early 1900's on. It is a story of accusations of murder in eastern Montana, of bigamy, of destruction of a corpse, of prison, of family, of crime, of mining in Butte, of the incredible character of Christy's grandmother, etc. The book branches out to talk about WWI, as some of Christy's family fought in the war. It talked of a robbery gone wrong that ended in a murder, of arrests, of a jail break, and of capital punishment. Clearly, the highlight of the book, is the amazing quality of a person (Christy's grandmother) that Christy discovered in her researching journey of her family tree. One Night is a phenomenal story, one that is well researched and absolutely well written.

The book, "Finding the Bad Inn," is the sequel to One Night In a Bad Inn. It too is absolutely excellent, as Leskovar takes you on the journey of research that she undertook to uncover all of the family secrets, all the legal wranglings of the drama within her family tree. Traveling clear across the globe in her research efforts, Christy takes you along, and she provides beautifully written descriptions of research, of interactions with family members, with authorities on many aspects of history, etc. One may think that reading about someone else's research would be boring, but not so with Leskovar's approach. If one enjoys One Night In a Bad Inn, then reading Find the Bad Inn will prove to be anything but boring. In her pursuit of information, Christy demanded of herself that she make sure that what she was writing was accurate, not journalistic hearsay. This was impressive, given that over and over she came across information (whether by newspaper reports or family member hearsay) that was intriguing but possibly not the accurate story. As I read, I often thought, "if only today's journalists would demand of themselves the accuracy with which Christy demanded for her own writing, how different journalism would be today."

I highly, highly recommend these two books by Christy Leskovar.