Literary Las Vegas: Heidi Loeb Hegerich

Like her “Love Target” protagonist, Nevada author Heidi Loeb Hegerich was a Las Vegas showgirl in the ’50s and swinging ’60s. At 15, Hegerich moved with her parents from Germany to California. At 16, she missed her friends in Munich enough to run away, lie about her age and get a job dancing in Las Vegas in an attempt to earn her fare home. “We were showgirls, Vegas royalty,” she wrote. “We could get away with murder.” Along the way, she was the target of plenty of advances. Many of her suitors’ names were changed in the novel, but not two of the biggest, Elvis Presley and Harry Belafonte.

Hegerich is scheduled to sign copies of her novel from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. March 14 during the Spring Fling Book Fair at the Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road. For more information, visit thelovetarget.com.

Excerpt:

Women were in awe of “The King.” Well, not me — at least, not entirely. I’d seen a couple of Presley’s movies. They were completely corny. Just silly, super bad, a cheap way to get his handsome face up on the silver screen to sell millions of theater tickets — and millions more of his records. I didn’t really dig his records, either. Kids’ music. All that hiccuping and moaning! I listened to jazz. So did Astrid. In our apartment we spun Ray Charles, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Lena Horne. We were too cool for rock’n’roll.

Astrid pulled her cigarette from her lips, blew a smoky ring toward me and curled her lower lip into a pout, like The King. She enjoyed riling me, like a big sister would.

“Why not Elvis?” she said. “Anything is possible in Vegas.”

Well, at least her lie was plausible. The glitzy Sahara, with its 14-story tower, was the preferred place for Presley and his entourage to stay whenever he visited town. Every showgirl knew that. Everyone in Vegas knew that.