Chris Enss details her quest to share the history of women of the Old West
The story of the role women played on the frontier is one that has long been overlooked, especially in popular culture. In movies and TV shows, women have largely been relegated to supporting characters, and while that has changed in recent years, the role women actually played in taming the Old West is still largely misunderstood.
Most would agree that pulling a prank on a notorious gangster isn’t a wise move. And, in retrospect, Roy Abshier figures his father would have agreed, as well. But that didn’t stop Alfred Abshier and his buddies in 1934, when they tossed an owl into a tent where T.C. Blackburn slept on a deer hunting trip in the Ocala National Forest.
“He about tore the tent down,” Roy Abshier recalled, remembering the story his father told him years ago. “It was a joke … everyone had a big laugh over it.”
It wasn’t until later that Alfred Abshier, along with the rest of Ocklawaha, learned that Blackburn and his mother weren’t the sort of visitors they made themselves out to be.
Read more here: http://www.ocala.com/news/20160807/more-ma-barker-family-stories-highlight-local-interactions
You couldn’t make this up—a baseball team made up of convicted felons competing to reduce their sentences. The Wyoming State Penitentiary All Stars had a 12-man roster that included three rapists, a forger, five thieves, and three killers. They played their first game in the summer of 1912. Winning meant time off their sentences, individual errors that led to a loss meant a death sentence…
Read more here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/12/the-season-s-best-baseball-books.html
On a hot summer day in baseball-mad Rawlins, Wyoming in 1911, a tightly-packed crowd watched pitcher Thomas Cameron rear back and hurl a fastball toward home plate. The ball went wild, clipping the opposing player on the left shoulder before bouncing into the stands, allowing him to take first base.
Cameron was dying on the mound. In more ways than one…
Read more here: http://nypost.com/2014/09/14/the-death-row-inmates-who-were-forced-to-play-baseball-for-their-lives/
It’s not often that a national book launch takes place at a baseball stadium, but one is coming to Raley Field.
Grass Valley nonfiction Western writer Chris Enss and co-author Howard Kazanjian tell a remarkable, little-known and scandalous story in “Death Row All Stars: A Story of Baseball, Corruption, and Murder” (Globe Pequot, $17, 176 pages). The two will be at Raley Field for a meet ’n’ greet and book-signing from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. Saturday, before the Sacramento River Cats take on the Reno Aces at 7:05 p.m.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/08/26/6653033/between-the-lines-death-row-all.html
Appropriately, the road to writer Chris Enss’ home on the outskirts of Grass Valley takes a visitor along the Overland Emigrant Trail, past Ponderosa Pines Way and Lone Star Road, and on two streets named after rattlesnakes.
Parked in the three-car garage of the 3,000-square-foot-plus house is her ride – a Ford pickup truck. Enss is a screenwriter and author of 27 nonfiction Westerns about the unheralded folks who lived, loved and died in the Old West – mail-order brides, prospectors, nurses, entertainers, soldiers. She writes mostly about pioneering women, both the innocent (“Frontier Teachers,” “The Doctor Wore Petticoats”) and the not-so-much (“Bedside Book of Bad Girls,” “Pistol Packin’ Madams”).
She also has written books about some of the Old West’s folk heroes – William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Annie Oakley, Gen. George Custer – and less genuine but more recent Western-centric icons – Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, John Wayne. “I’m an observer of history who retells what is there,” she said modestly.
Chris Enss was interviewed by the Dodge City Globe about the soon to be developed movie “Thunder Over the Plains” based on “Thunder Over the Prairie” by Chris Enss and Howard Kazanjian.
Download Dodge City Globe PDF
What History Has Taught Me
by Chris Enss
Tiger Woods and Buffalo Bill Cody are men who thought monogamy was a type of wood. They were legendary talents with flaws who were eager to entertain the numerous women who threw themselves at the men, regardless of the fact that they were married.
Elizabeth Custer’s extramarital affairs were emotional entanglements and not sexual.
Author Chris Enss was the subject of The Sacramento Bee Scene, January 16th, 2008
“The couples who lived in the Old West had drive and grit,” Chris Enss was saying, passion rising in her voice. “The had the ability to persevere despite rough winters, disease, hostile natives and not enough food. They stuck together.
