Synopsis: Isabella Bird was a proper Victorian lady, a minster’s daughter, a writer who traveled the globe. She was expected to marry a man of means and position instead she was drawn to a gruff mountain man, a desperado named Jim Nugent.
The unlikely pair met in Estes Park, Colorado in 1873. Jim was enchanted by Isabella and she was infatuated with him. In a published version of Isabella’s letter to her sister, she said of Jim that “he was a man any woman might love but no sane woman would marry.” On a climb to the top of Longs Peak their friendship blossomed into more than expected.
This book reveals the true story of Bird’s relationship with Nugent as they traveled through the dramatic wilderness of the Rocky Mountains.
Critique: 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.
