Award-winning wildlife ecologist and bestselling author Anne LaBastille was a trailblazer in every sense of the word. Perhaps best known for her seminal wilderness book Woodswoman , recounting her years spent living in a remote Adirondacks cabin, and which inspired countless women to shun societal dictates and pursue their passions, LaBastille railed against bureaucracy and patriarchy to become a powerful figure in environmentalism. Anne LaBastille is the first ever biography of this powerful and polarizing woman who dedicated her life to preserving the natural world.  Born in 1933, LaBastille was raised in a time when women largely stayed at home. A lover of the outdoors, curious, and sharp-witted, LaBastille was determined to become a wildlife ecologist. When urged to conduct research in a lab while completing her master’s degree in wildlife management at Colorado State, she insisted that the best way to study big game – the subject of her thesis – was out in the field. A professor who recognized her grit gave her a truck and his best wishes. After receiving her Ph.D. from Cornell University, LaBastille traveled the world working for the betterment of the environment and its natural inhabitants, especially at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala where she tried for decades to save the giant pied-billed grebe from extinction.  Throughout the course of her environmental work, LaBastille was an insatiable writer. Beyond Woodswoman  and its several sequels , Mama Poc  chronicles her time in Lake Atitlan, Jaguar Totem  covers her conservation work in in foreign countries across the world, and numerous articles – including at least one in her early career she wrote under a man’s name in order to get published – in National Geographic, Readers Digest, Outdoor Life , and Adirondack Life,  among others, relate her adventures and adamant principles of conservation. Throughout her life, LaBastille was awarded the World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal, the Society of Women Geographers Gold medal, and Nature Educator of the Year from the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History. Through personal interviews and archival research, Adirondack Experience museum interpreter and seventh-generation Adirondacker Penny Harr paints an in-depth portrait of LaBastille’s personal and rich inner-life including and beyond her career achievements, breathing life into a legend of wildlife conservation.  “I'm very glad we have this book. Anne was an iconic figure in the history of the Adirondacks, and the American conservation movement--bracing, brash, and completely sure of herself in a way few women of her vintage allowed themselves to be. A fascinating character!" -- Bill McKibben, bestselling author of Here Comes the Sun Penny Harr is a seventh-generation Adirondacker that grew up among the region’s mountains and lakes. She is a staffer at the Adirondack Experience, The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake, which the New York Times  praised as “the best (museum) of its kind in the world.”   In addition to being an avid reader, she enjoys kayaking, hiking and exploring historical sites around the northeast. Her love of the Adirondacks and its preservation make her a kindred spirit with Anne LaBastille. She lives in the Adirondack Park where she raised her two children.