Thirty and beautiful, Alma Garret married after the panic of 1873 to salvage her father's strained finances. Preferring a fool's errand to the circumstances of New York society, she came west with her husband, Brom, to prospect, a woolly situation she softened with liberal use of laudanum.

When her husband died under mysterious circumstances, she could have easily returned to New York, especially once she learned that the gold claim Al Swearengen wanted back so dearly was, in fact, a huge strike, perhaps the largest in town.

Instead, like so many Deadwood denizens, Alma has stayed in town to reinvent herself. Determined to stay, she gave up the laudanum, and with the support of Seth Bullock and the prospector Ellsworth, she has begun working her claim. She has also become the adoptive parent of little Sofia Metz, whose family was killed by road agents.

Bullock's protection has been much needed, not only against Swearengen and his minions, but against Alma's own father, the ne'er do well upper-class con man Otis Russell, who has gotten word of her windfall.

Bullock and Alma have grown increasingly close, and even with the arrival of Bullock's family in town, the two have become lovers.