Chris Enss is an award winning, New York Times Bestselling author who has penned more than thirty books on the subject of women of the Old West. In addition to being a Spur Award finalist, she’s also been honored with an Elmer Kelton Book Award, two Will Rogers Medallion Awards, the Oklahoma Historical Society’s Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History Award, the Spirit of the West Alive Award cosponsored by the Wild West Gazette, and the Citizen of the Year Award from the Nevada County Historical Society. Her most recent works include Cowboys, Creatures, and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures, The Principles of Posse Management: Lessons from the Old West for Today’s Leaders, The Trials of Annie Oakley, and The Pinks: The First Women Detectives, Operatives, and Spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
She is also the winner at this year’s South Dakota Festival of Book.
Her latest novel, According to Kate, centers on Doc Holliday’s paramour Big Nose Kate who could never get a publisher to give her the big bucks she demanded to tell the story of her life, but that didn’t mean she didn’t collect material she wanted to use in a biography. Over the fifty years Mary Kate Cummings, alias Big Nose Kate, traversed the West she saved letters from her family, musings she had written about her love interests, and life with the notorious John Henry Holliday. Using rare, never before published material Big Nose Kate stock-piled in anticipation of writing the tale of her days on the Wild Frontier, the definitive book about the famous soiled dove will finally be told.
Kate claims to have witnessed the Gunfight at the OK Corral and exchanged words with the likes of Wyatt Earp and Josephine Marcus. There’s no doubt she embellished her adventures, but that doesn’t take away from their historical importance. She was a controversial figure in a rough and rowdy territory. What she witnessed, the lifestyle she led, and the influential western people she met are fascinating and represent a time period much romanticized.
According to Kate is available at https://amzn.to/2C4uHgT
