True biography of a madam known throughout the west in the 1930s, 1940s and up through the 1960s.

This biography of Vickie Star was transcribed and pulled together by R. B. Griffith in Vickie Star's home. It was a year-long process. Star wanted her story told. While pulling the first draft together, Griffith's agent arranged for publication by Ballentine Books. An advance of $25,000 was offered but Vickie Starr had just read where Lee Iaccoca had received a million dollar advance for his book (about saving Chrysler Motors). Griffith explained to Starr that she was not Lee Iaccoca and that she was "darned lucky" to get what she did. But Vickie Star didn't care for that idea and called the publisher herself and demanded more. That, of course, ended the deal. Later when Star read her finished book she discovered, much to her surprise, who she had been. She fell into a huge funk. "I can't publish this. This was an awful life. I can't have my family and friends believe I did all this," she wailed. So her story was "put on the shelf."

That was about 30 years ago. Vickie is gone now and her real name has been changed by the author (who was given the rights to the book) to Vickie Star, one of her working names.

At the age of 16, Vickie Star left her parents' Missouri farm at the height of the Great Depression and ended up in San Francisco where she "turned out." That means she became a prostitute, but Vickie had more than sex on her side. She was a business woman and ended up owning some of the most popular brothels in Nevada including Ash Meadows, which sat on the edge of Death Valley. The only way to get there was either by airplane or on a very long rutted road that few would ever drive. Vickie, it is said, owned and managed the first fly-in brothel—at least in the United States..

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