Karen Abbott tells the tale of the Everleigh Club brothel that operated from 1900 to 1911 on Chicago's Near South Side. The madams, Ada and Minna Everleigh, were sisters whose shifting identities had them as traveling actors, Edgar Alan Poe's relatives, Kentucky debutantes fleeing violent husbands, and daughters of a once-wealthy Virginia lawyer crushed by the Civil War. Abbott tells the tale of how the custom of drinking champagne out of a slipper may have started at the Everleigh Club.
An American journalist and author, Karen Abbott specializes in religion and stories of American history. She wrote the [*Sin in the Second City*](http://www.sininthesecondcity.com/) about the Everleigh brothel in early 1900s Chicago.