Who was Evelyn Nesbit anyways?

With all its scrambled plots and characters, its easy to get lost in the sea of stories in Ragtime. Despite its solid entourage of recurring characters, one specific character has particularly piqued my interest, Evelyn Nesbit. Painted as an especially confusing character, Evelyn's actions always strike me as a weird combination of hesitant and bold. Though we are given glimpses into her background (including hints at several traumatic experiences), it surprises me that more people are not more sympathetic towards her. Maybe her naivety and often resigned demeanor don't endear her to most readers, but I found Doctorow's rendition of her pretty realistic given the things she's lived through. As I read more about her from other sources, I was shocked to learn the extent of her misfortunes. The loss of her father at a very early age, the exploitation of her body by her own mother, and eventually the rape (rapes?) and physical abuse we come to read about in the book all contributed to the damaged psyche she now lives with. Reading about her from an 'objective' standpoint raises again the question of history vs fiction, as I found that I definitely consumed a 'historical' biography of her differently than I did the passages in Ragtime. Regardless of how she may have lived and suffered in her own lifetime, she is largely remembered posthumously as one of the last, great tragic beauties.