Dr. Heather Branstetter, author of “Selling Sex in the Silver Valley: A Business in Doing Pleasure” will discuss the book Thursday, Aug. 17 at 7 p.m. in the library Community Room.

This program is offered as one of series of regional author talks as part of the library’s Adult Summer Reading programs.

Once the largest silver producer in the world, Wallace became notorious for labor uprisings, hard drinking, gambling, and prostitution. As late as 1991, illegal brothels openly flourished because locals believed that sex work prevented rape and bolstered the economy, so long as it was regulated and confined to a particular area of town.

The madams enjoyed unprecedented status as influential businesswomen, community leaders and philanthropists, while elsewhere a growing aversion to the sex trade drove red-light districts underground. Branstetter’s research features previously unpublished archival materials and oral histories as she relates the intimate details of this unlikely story.

A Silver Valley native, Branstetter graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy from the University of Idaho before completing a doctorate in rhetoric, writing and cultural studies at the University of North Carolina. She taught at the University of Idaho, the University of North Carolina and Wake Forest University and was assistant professor of rhetoric and writing at the Virginia Military Institute. She now lives in Wallace where she is executive director of the Historic Wallace Preservation Society.

Copies of the book will be available to purchase for signing, with a portion of sales benefiting the Friends of the Library.