A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

And now for something different, at least from this author. It is like Moo, which followed A Thousand Acres. This is an entertaining, light murder mystery set in Monterey, California, in 1851 during the Gold Rush. Eliza turned to sex work after her husband died in a bar brawl. She finds it preferable to the miserable marriage her Covenanter parents pushed her into to nip her budding romance with an Irish Catholic laborer back home in Kalamazoo. Why a man over a decade her senior who brutalized her physically, emotionally, and sexually, was preferred over an age congruent man she liked is beyond me, but you could see getting paid for sex might be preferable than being essentially raped every day, but you can easily figure out why she had no interest in going back. When several women in their dangerous line of work disappear and neither the sheriff nor the local vigilantes seem to care, Eliza and her cross-dressing friend decide to investigate themselves. It is a dangerous business, but they are matter-of-fact as they go about uncovering a killer.