The Divorce Seekers
The DIVORCE SEEKERS
A Nevada Divorce Ranch Memoir
by William and Sandra McGee
True stories. 500 images.
“Best book yet about Nevada’s famous dude-divorce ranch business.”
– Eric Moody, Nevada Historical Society, Reno
“Bill’s stories are like an old Hollywood movie coming to life.”
– Sandra V. McGee, co-author
Reno, 1947
A handsome cowboy hires on at the exclusive Flying M.E. divorce ranch for wealthy Easterners.
It was the heyday of the Reno divorce era. Divorce seekers — as the media called them — came running to Reno by the thousands… the rich, the poor, the famous, and the working class. If they had the money and wanted their privacy from the prying eyes of the press, they stayed on a divorce ranch… and the Flying M.E., twenty miles south of Reno, was the most exclusive of them all.
From 1947 to 1949, Bill McGee was the head dude wrangler on the Flying M.E. He entertained wealthy Eastern socialites with names like Astor and du Pont, and Hollywood movie stars Ava Gardner and Clark Gable.
“At the age of twenty-one and the only man on the ranch, surrounded by all those beautiful and wealthy women, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.” – Bill McGee
Bill McGee and his co-author/wife, Sandra McGee, recapture those years in The Divorce Seekers – A Photo Memoir of a Nevada Dude Wrangler, a collection of true stories about the fascinating and changing cast of characters that came and went every six weeks on the Flying M.E. The hardcover coffee table book is richly illustrated with 500 b/w images, most never before published and from the scrapbooks of former Flying M.E. guests.
“The images – with their smoky, black-and-white, retro allure – are what brought the time and place alive for me so that I could bring my characters to life in my novel … This book is a treasure if only for the photos alone.”
– Deb Caletti, bestselling author of the Reno divorce ranch novel, The Secrets She Keeps
444 pp, 500 b/w photos & illustrations
Notes, appendices, bibliography, index
Hardcover, 8.5″ x 11″, $35.00
BMC Publications (2004)
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Meet Bill McGee
Next up: Once Upon A Time In RENO