Mostly through historic letters and news articles, Chris Enss reconstructs the adventurous 19th century world travels of Isabella Bird, focusing on her time spent in the Rocky Mountains and particularly the Estes Park area of Colorado, where we meet Jim Nugent, the notorious mountain man she fell in love with. The unlikely pairing should not be a surprise from what we know of Bird, a woman who defied the scope of what was expected of women in the mid-1800s. Overlaying much of the book are the ever-present Rockies and the splendor of the old Mountain West, along with its undercurrent of frontier conflicts. Interesting to read what it was like traversing the local terrain and climbing Long's Peak over 160 years ago.Publisher description:
Isabella Bird was a proper Victorian lady expected to marry a man of means and position. Instead she was drawn to a gruff mountain man, a desperado named Jim Nugent. This book reveals the true story of Bird's relationship with Nugent as they traveled through the dramatic wilderness of the Rocky Mountains.