Midwest Book Review of The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch

“The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch tells the true-crime story of outlaw Laura Bullion, the Wild Bunch’s only known female train robber, who rode with outlaws and became notorious for participating in a high-stakes robbery. Her name was renowned for decades until she disappeared.

Chris Enss embarks on a wild ride through the West to uncover Bullion’s story, life, motivations, and ultimate fate, bringing readers into a world documented not by the usual memoir, but through fragments of reports and contemporary accounts. From these, she reconstructs Bullion’s world with an eye toward vividly portraying the Wild Bunch in a different light, revealing Bullion and the other women whose lives swirled around uncommon choices.

Enss purposely shifts the timeline of events back and forth, opening with a 1949 Memphis seamstress and moving back to the Wild Bunch years, contrasting and profiling the lives of Bullion and the other women, their motivations and choices for becoming female bandits, and their return to more socially acceptable lives.

The first chapter outlines these women and Pinkerton Detective Agency records regarding them, while the second returns to 1887, when a great blizzard wreaks havoc on the Texas longhorn cattle industry and prompts changes in cattle roundups along with the emergence of rustlers and thieves in its wake. From these roots emerges the Ketchum Gang of train robbers, who find newfound success in something much easier than cattle rustling.

As the chapters fill in the myths, realities, and history of the Wild Bunch, they also create background on the men and women who pioneered the West in a very different manner, participating in outlaw activities that thwarted the Pinkertons in different ways.

Laura Bullion’s story intersects with these events, which are heavily footnoted and accented with vintage black-and-white photos and illustrations throughout. The exceptionally lively “you are there” form of reporting also provides general readers an inviting narrative of action and reaction that brings this world to life.

Especially notable is the critical thinking Enss applies to her subject. Not content with simply unearthing and reproducing newspaper accounts, she consistently peppers her findings with auxiliary research and points out inconsistencies in reporting and what most likely truly happened. This will especially satisfy history readers who know that not every newspaper account, even from that era, can be relied upon as intrinsically accurate.

The result is a vivid blend of mystery, history, women’s issues, and fact-based analysis that expands our understanding of the subjects, motivations, and choices these individuals made during this turbulent period of Western history.

Librarians seeking additions to their Western or women’s history holdings that encourage critical thinking about the American West, promote book club discussions, or support classroom study of women who chose nontraditional lives before eventually returning to conventional society will find The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch unusually accessible to a wide audience.”

Midwest Book Review

Available everywhere August 15, 2026.  Enter now to win a copy of The Last Ride.