A touching, well-researched story of the love shared between a prolific author and Victorian lady in the Rocky Mountains and the renegade trapper who helped her realize her dream of climbing Longs Peak.

– Win Blevins, New York Times Bestselling Author of Give My Heart to the Hawks

Thank you Chris Enss, for this marvelous introduction to Isabella Bird, an English lady who refused to let unremitting pain keep her from exploring the American West. Isabella was a prolific writer whose reports on all she saw and experienced brought admirers from across the world to bask in the wonders of Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. Americans today will gain greater appreciation for our country, seeing it through this woman’s eyes even as she fell in love with a crusty, drink-riddled mountain man. Enss, a prolific and engaging writer in her own right, beautifully brings this woman to life.

– Carol Crigger, Two-time Western Writers of America Spur Award Winner

A delightful account of the peregrinations of Isabella Bird, footloose nineteenth-century English travel and inspirational writer. She documented journeys in Britain and the Pacific, finally ending in Colorado, where she befriended legendary Rocky Mountain Jim Nugent. Her wanderlust later took her to Asia and north Africa. If you don’t know Isabella Bird’s story, you’re in for a treat. A good read by Chris Enss, a perennial winner.

– Harlan Hague, Spur Award Finalist and Will Rogers Medallion Winner

The Lady and the Mountain Man: Isabella Bird, Rocky Mountain Jim, and their Unlikely Friendship is the extensively researched, true-life account of how two people with tremendously different backgrounds and temperaments shared a mutual love of a wild land. Isabella Bird was a well-to-do woman, an author and a traveler with dreams, expected to marry a man of means and position. Yet she became infatuated with the gruff desperado Jim Nugent ("Rocky Mountain Jim") in Estes Park, Colorado in 1873. Their unlikely friendship bloomed over the course of a climb to the top of Longs Peak. Extensive notes, a bibliography, and an index round out his in-depth examination of a journey and a relationship that would transform both Isabella and Jim of them for the rest of their lives - although Isabella was ultimately destined to have a much longer life than Jim. A thoroughly captivating slice of history, The Lady and the Mountain Man is highly recommended especially for public library Western History collections.

– Midwest Book Review, Midwest Book Review