One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus
Based on an actual historical event but told through fictional diaries, this is the story of May Dodd-a remarkable woman who, in 1875, travels through the American West to marry the chief of the Cheyenne Nation. n nOne Thousand White Women begins with May Dodd's journey into an unknown world. Having been committed to an insane asylum by her blue-blood family for the crime of loving a man beneath her station, May finds that her only hope for freedom and redemption is to participate in a secret government program whereby women from civilized society become the brides of Cheyenne warriors. What follows is a series of breathtaking adventures-May's brief, passionate romance with the gallant young army captain John Bourke; her marriage to the great chief Little Wolf; and her conflict of being caught between loving two men and living two completely different lives. n nFergus portrays the perceptions and emotions of women...with tremendous insight and sensitivity.-Booklist n nA superb tale of sorrow, suspense, exultation, and triumph. -Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump n nEditorial Reviews n nA most impressive novel that melds the physical world to the spiritual. One Thousand White Women is engaging, entertaining, well-written, and well-told. It will be widely read for a long time, as will the rest of Jim Fergus's work. -Rick Bass, author of Where the Sea Used to Be n nJim Fergus knows his country in a way that's evocative Dee Brown and all the other great writers of the American West and its native peoples. But One Thousand White Women is more than a chronicle of the Old West. It's a superb tale of sorrow, suspense, exultation, and triumph that leaves the reader waiting to turn the page and wonderfully wrung out at the end. -Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump n nThe best writing transports readers to another time and place, so that when they reluctantly close the book, they are astonished to find themselves returned to their everyday lives. One Thousand White Women is such a book. Jim Fergus so skillfully envelops us in the heart and mind of his main character, May Dodd, that we weep when she mourns, we shake our fist at anyone who tries to sway her course, and our hearts pound when she is in danger. -Colorado Springs Gazette n nAn impressive historical...terse, convincing, and affecting. -Kirkus Reviews n- From the Publisher n nLong, brisk, charming first novel about an 1875 treaty between Ulysses S. Grant and Little Wolf, chief of the Cheyenne nation, by the sports reporter and author of the memoir A Hunter's Road (1992). Little Wolf comes to Washington and suggests to President Grant that peace between the Whites and Cheyenne could be established if the Cheyenne were given white women as wives, and that the tribe would agree to raise the children from such unions. The thought of miscegenation naturally enough astounds Grant, but he sees a certain wisdom in trading 1,000 white women for 1,000 horses, and he secretly approves the Brides For Indians treaty. He recruits women from jails, penitentiaries, debtors' prisons, and mental institutions-offering full pardons or unconditional release. May Dodd, born to wealth in Chicago in 1850, had left home in her teens and become the mistress of her father's grain-elevator foreman. Her outraged father had her kidnaped, imprisoning her in a monstrous lunatic asylum. When Grant's offer arrives, she leaps at it and soon finds herself traveling west with hundreds of white and black would-be brides. All are indentured to the Cheyenne for two years, must produce children, and then will have the option of leaving. May, who keeps the journal we read, marries Little Wolf and lives in a crowded tipi with his two other wives, their children, and an old crone who enforces the rules. Reading about life among the Cheyenne is spellbinding, especially when the women show up the braves at arm-wrestling, foot-racing, bow-shooting, and gambling. Liquor raises its evil head, as it will, and reduces the braves to savagery. But the women recover, go out on the winter kill withtheir husbands, and accompany them to a trading post where they drive hard bargains and stop the usual cheating of the braves. Eventually, when the cavalry attacks the Cheyenne, mistakenly thinking they're Crazy Horse's Sioux, May is killed. An impressive historical, terse, convincing, and affecting. n- Kirkus Reviews n nIn 1854 Cheyenne Chief Little Wolf asked for 1,000 white women as brides for his warriors in exchange for 1,000 horses. Using this true incident, Fergus lets his imagination go wild and creates a journal of one of his ancestors who became one of those brides in 1875. Laura Hicks renders this imaginative work splendidly. She is vivacious and expressive as May Dodd, who tells the story of her family and her new life with the Cheyenne. Her vocal characterizations, especially of the various immigrant women Dodd encounters, are lively. A work this unusual needs a performance that is versatile and out of the ordinary, both of which has achieved. M.T.F. AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine n- OCT/NOV 06 - AudioFile
Publication Details
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Binding: Paperback
Published by: St. Martin's Publishing Group: , 2000
Edition:
ISBN: 9780312199432 | 0312199430
496 pages.
Book Condition: Very Good
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