Additional information
by Chris Enss (Author)
Amidst mining camps, cow towns, desolate landscapes and filthy boomtowns were a succession of women who survived dangerous gambling games against ruthless rowdy men whose pride was staked on always having the upper hand. In the first book of its kind, author Chris Enss presents an action-filled true portrait of fifteen notorious women gamblers from the Old West. Among those profiled are: "Poker" Alice Ivers, the finest player bar none from Deadwood to Tombstone; Eleanora Dumont, the West's hottest twenty-one dealer; and Lottie Deno, the beautiful faro dealer who gambled all the way from Texas to Alaska. Enss describes the settings, and the stakes, with vintage photographs, as well as the popular games of the times: Poker, Faro, Dice, Monte, Craps, Chuck-A-Luck, and Fan Tan, among them. Their legacy had almost disappeared, but the recent surge in poker players coast to coast and the growth of gambling demanded that these real women, at long last, be remembered for the true adventurers, and winners, they made of themselves.
Chris Enss is an award-winning screenwriter and author whose books include Buffalo Gals and How the West Was Worn. She lives in Grass Valley, California.Back Jacket
Place your bets, place your bets . . . From the muddy cowtowns of Montana to the posh parlors of Deadwood and Tombstone, past a succession of swinging batwing doors to the smoke-filled rooms in the back, some of the most colorful ladies in the Wild West also happened to be some of the shrewdest gamblers. With her inimitable instinct for a good story, Chris Enss points her pen toward fifteen of the most fascinating characters to ever flip a hole card or lace a corset. "Poker" Alice Ivers, for instance, checked and raised her way through some of the roughest mining towns in the West, while Lottie Deno, the prettiest faro dealer to ever turn a card, "bucked the tiger" all the way from Texas to Alaska. And who could ever bet against Eleanora Dumont, a twenty-one dealer known far and wide as "Madam Moustache"?
Author Biography
Chris Enss is an award-winning screen writer who has written for television, short subject films, live performances, and for the movies, and is the co-author (with JoAnn Chartier) of Love Untamed: True Romances Stories of the Old West, Gilded Girls: Women Entertainers of the Old West, and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon: Women Patriots and Soldiers of the Old West and The Cowboy and the Senorita and Happy Trails (with Howard Kazanjian). Her most recent books include Buffalo Gals: Women of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and How the West was Worn. Her research and writing and reveals the funny, touching, exciting, and tragic stories of historical and contemporary times.Enss has done everything from stand-up comedy to working as a stunt person at the Old Tucson Movie Studio. She learned the basics of writing for film and television at the University of Arizona, and she is currently working with Return of the Jed" producer Howard Kazanjian on the movie version of The Cowboy and the Senorita, their biography of western stars Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.
