PROUDLY MADE tells the story of how the Pennsylvania Wilds brand and movement were born, intertwined with Enos’ own family history and backstory of growing up in rural PA and how and why she came to be one of the movement’s chief instigators and champions.

Written in an open, vulnerable way that has been compared to Cheryl Strayed’s writing in WILD: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Enos, a former journalist and founder and CEO of the PA Wilds Center, the backbone nonprofit for the regional movement, said that while the book was a personal project, she hopes it helps advance the Wilds cause and others like it. 

“In writing this book, I wanted more people to understand that the PA Wilds work is bigger than any one person or organization and critical to the future of rural PA,” said Enos, whose family has lived in the region for at least four generations. “In order to do that, I knew I was going to have to take some risks, to personalize it and be as real as I could in the writing, including about my own skepticism, flaws and shortcomings.”

Many people and places from across the PA Wilds region are highlighted in PROUDLY MADE. Enos said she interviewed more than 30 people for the book, enlisted three dozen others to read early versions of the manuscript and provide feedback on key events, and also relied heavily on public records and meetings to craft the narrative. But mostly, she said, it is based on her personal experience.

Enos said she is grateful that so many people were willing to share their recollections and insights with her for the memoir.

“Narratives about a place are powerful things,” Enos said. “Too often in rural America, and definitely in Appalachia, they are told by people from outside and through a lens that is often negative. The Wilds work had some rocky moments, but our region stuck with it, and to me what we’ve accomplished together is such an inspiring story about this place and the people who live here. I mean, there’s a lot of ways to get tourism development wrong. And rural PA is doing a lot of things right. We’ve become a national model because of it.”

Enos said she felt a responsibility to try to tell that story. “In such a large rural region as ours, with vast distances between many towns and limited media and connectivity, only a handful of people who were traveling the region regularly for this work had visibility on the collective story that was unfolding, and of those, only one spent a decade as a journalist and went to bed each night writing chapters in her head. At first I tried to duck the responsibility of it. Writing a book is so much work, and it doesn’t pay, at least not for first time authors like me. I have three kids, a husband, other responsibilities. But it just gnawed at me. It wouldn’t let me go.”

PROUDLY MADE has received advance praise from Pennsylvania’s Office of Outdoor Recreation and national experts and practitioners in the rural development, sustainable outdoor recreation and tourism spaces, as well as from several writers, including local authors John Schlimm, Sam MacDonald, and New York Times best-selling writer Kristine Gasbarre, who also just published a memoir, SHOW DON’T TELL: A Writer, Her Teacher, and the Power of Sharing our Stories, about one of the teachers she had growing up in rural PA (Hatchette Book Group).

For her part, Enos says she is just happy to finally have the book done. She said it took about eight years to finish the manuscript because she was writing it on the side while raising a family and building a rural nonprofit. 

“I can’t tell you how many times I sat in my tree stand during hunting season thinking, next year I will have it done,” Enos said. “And then the next season I’d be back in that same stand, watching the woods wake up and listening to the squirrels race around, a little further along with the writing but still saying the same thing. It takes so much perseverance to write a book. This year I got in my hunting stand and I gotta say, I couldn’t stop smiling! However it is received, I’m proud that I stuck it out and got it done. I appreciate people giving it a chance.”

Don’t miss out on the PROUDLY MADE book launch event at AO on Monday, June 9th from 6-9pm! Find those details here.

(Options to have the book signed will appear when you add it to your cart. If you’d like your copy signed, it will ship June 9th, 2025.)