Proudly Made: A Story of Reinvention in the Big Woods and Small Towns of the Pennsylvania Wilds Paperback – June 3, 2025

Winner of a Silver award from The Nonfiction Book AwardsAs more communities look to leverage the country’s growing outdoor recreation economy, a forgotten expanse of America’s tapestry, in Pennsylvania's Appalachian Mountains, has emerged as a leader.“No initiative exists in the country on this scale and level of strategic thinking,” the Society of American Travel Writers said of the Pennsylvania Wilds in 2008.Now the inspiring backstory of this rural movement is told from the perspective of one of its chief instigators, a woman whose childhood was shaped by the region’s economic challenges and natural beauty as surely as its high plateau was carved by water.A new mom and former journalist returning to reclaim her rural roots, Ta Enos sees the promise of nature tourism, but must first overcome insecurities to value who she is and her own ability to lead. Ta crafts an empowering blueprint of how after decades of population loss, rural PA came together to leverage two of its greatest assets — its people and its public lands — to create a brighter future for its communities. PROUDLY MADE captures the story of an independent woman and region reinventing themselves on their own terms, and the special landscape and shared history that helps them bridge traditional divides. From Alaska to Pennsylvania, it takes readers on an unforgettable 20-year journey that shaped the storyteller as much as she shaped it, heralding the difference one person with a little mettle can make, and the greater good that can come when many of us work together. Read more