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One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

(One Thousand White Women #1)

Jim Fergus (Goodreads Author)

3.89 · Rating details · 115,752 ratings · 8,884 reviews

One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians i ...more

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Paperback, 434 pages

Published February 15th 1999 by St. Martin's Griffin (first published March 15th 1998)

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Start your review of One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)

Dec 21, 2008 Daniel rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2009, book-club

Dear May Dodd,

I received your letter of 20 January 1876, accompanied by portions of your journal, and, in short, I'm not falling for it. They sound like they were written sometime in the 1990s, and probably by a man. While I found many reasons to come to this conclusion, the biggest giveaways were your obsession with penis size and the fact that your signature was followed by an AOL e-mail address.

Sincerely,
Disgruntled Reader

OK, that was a bit harsh and if for some reason Mr. Fergus is reading t Dear May Dodd,

I received your letter of 20 January 1876, accompanied by portions of your journal, and, in short, I'm not falling for it. They sound like they were written sometime in the 1990s, and probably by a man. While I found many reasons to come to this conclusion, the biggest giveaways were your obsession with penis size and the fact that your signature was followed by an AOL e-mail address.

Sincerely,
Disgruntled Reader

OK, that was a bit harsh and if for some reason Mr. Fergus is reading this review, I want to say to him: I didn't completely dislike "One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd," and I give you credit for trying to adopt the viewpoint of not just a woman, but a woman from more than a century ago. That took balls. Unfortunately for your readers, those balls weren't backed up by brains.

While Fergus obviously did a lot of research to learn about the culture of the Cheyenne nation and other Indian tribes -- he even shows his work by giving us a bibliography -- he completely fails to transport his readers back to an earlier time. That's the most basic requirement of any historical novel. Few pages go by in which Fergus doesn't attribute to May Dodd words and ideas that would be completely foreign to any woman living in the 1870s -- even a woman as progressive as May is supposed to be. For most of the novel, May sounds less like a 19th century woman of any background or educational level, and more like a Volvo-driving Web designer from San Francisco who's on her way to pick up her daughter at soccer practice, has to drop her off at the ex-husband's for his weekend visitation, and then, before going to her newly purchased fixer-upper in the Mission District, plans to stop by the polling place to vote for Dianne Feinstein.

Small examples: May repeatedly refers to another character as an "amateur ethnographer," describes herself as being "agnostic" when it comes to religion, characterizes herself as being as "big as a house" when pregnant, and says that a woman who ends her pregnancy "aborted" the baby. These are simply not words or ideas that any woman living in the 1870s would use, and especially not as casually as she does. This may sound like nitpicking, but there's never a point in the whole book in which even the most forgiving reader could honestly say to herself, "This can't possibly be a novel. He must have actually found May Dodd's lost journals from the 1870s." And yet that's what we the readers are apparently expected to do, at least according to Fergus's "Reading Group Gold" notes in the back of the edition I read.

There are other annoyances too. Many of the characters are given cutesy names that reflect their personalities and interests. The woman who studies and paints birds is named, unsurprisingly, Helen Flight, while a self-important and prudish character is, naturally, Narcissa White, and a dainty Southern belle is, wait for it, Daisy Lovelace. And, aside from giving characters lines and viewpoints that feel anachronistic, Fergus also makes passing reference to things that simply didn't exist in the 1870s. Hey, Jim, there was no Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra in 1875. Even the city's earliest such orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, wasn't formed until 16 years later. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) If you're trying to really make us believe we're reading a recovered journal, this is not the way to do it. Why not just give the Indian chief a BlackBerry, and President Ulysses S. Grant a subscription to Us Weekly?

All right, I've been nasty enough. There is a reason I gave "One Thousand White Women" two stars instead of one. Aside from the anachronisms, the book is reasonably well-written, and the story is compelling and relatively fast-paced. That makes up for some of the novel's faults. But you know what would have made the novel ten times better? Given that we're supposed to be reading the journals of a woman who's first diagnosed as insane, and then becomes a bride to an Indian chief under a secret government program, why come right out and reveal to your readers that she wasn't actually crazy and really did join a Cheyenne tribe? Why not leave it an open question, and let your readers decide for themselves whether the program was real or May Dodd was just nuts? That, perhaps, would make for a better novel.

On a side note, it was interesting to read Fergus's novel right after finishing Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders," and less than a year after reading Larry McMurtry's "Telegraph Days." What do the three have in common? Each novel is told from a woman's point, was written by a man, and focuses on a woman who are far more liberated and self-directed than her female contemporaries. While McMurtry's book was not a lot better than Fergus's (though it was a lot more fun), neither of them should even be mentioned in the same sentence as "Moll Flanders." (Oops.) It's impossible to imagine either one being widely read almost three centuries from now, as Defoe's 1722 novel is today. ...more

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Dec 07, 2010 Jessica rated it did not like it

Shelves: read-in-2010, fiction

Author: I have this book I want to publish.
Publisher: Okay, let me make sure it has what we are looking for in a book. After all, the bulk of your previous writing experience appears to be for an outdoors magazine. Correct?
Author: Yes that is correct.
Publisher: Okay, is your book an attempt to write from a woman’s point of view?
Author: Yes!
Publisher: Fantastic, do you have the slightest clue or insight into women’s thoughts or emotions?
Author: Nope.
Publisher: Great! Is your book riddled with wom Author: I have this book I want to publish.
Publisher: Okay, let me make sure it has what we are looking for in a book. After all, the bulk of your previous writing experience appears to be for an outdoors magazine. Correct?
Author: Yes that is correct.
Publisher: Okay, is your book an attempt to write from a woman’s point of view?
Author: Yes!
Publisher: Fantastic, do you have the slightest clue or insight into women’s thoughts or emotions?
Author: Nope.
Publisher: Great! Is your book riddled with women being raped?
Author: As a matter of fact, yes.
Publisher: This is great! Do you have these rape victims getting all sad, depressed and shutting down emotionally and physically?
Author: Why no! The protagonist gets raped for several years in a mental institution, then decides to participate in the Brides for Indians program, and is excited and not at all concerned about sleeping with other men along the way. She even gets raped in the Brides for Indians programs. In fact all the rape victims in my book bounce back with nary an emotional scratch. None of that “oh poor rape victim me” mentality in this book.
Publisher: Wonderful, wonderful! We need more stories that tell women to suck up rape.
Author: I couldn’t agree more.
Publisher: Do you use the word “perforce” at least 10 times throughout the book?
Author: Oh! Don’t you know it, I just learned that word and I think it makes me sound smart.
Publisher: Alright, so far so good, one more question…
Author: Hit me.
Publisher: Do you assign a bunch of the main female characters flimsy ethinicities so you can write their dialogue in tired dialect and accents?
Author: Oh hell yea! I have a southern belle, a German, two Irish chicks and a frenchy. All covered.
Publisher: WE NEED TO GET THIS BOOK TO THE MASSES!

Dear author, have you ever met a woman? Do you really think that we rebound from rape as quickly and easily as the women in your book? You are what is wrong with society. Stick to writing about kayaks and extreme snowboarding or whatever the heck it is you write about in your insulated little sportsman world.

Oh, and one more thing, nobody used the word "pregnant" back then. You're an idiot. ...more

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Aug 05, 2017 Elyse Walters rated it it was ok

Mary Dodd's crime was falling in love with a common man. After being committed to an insane asylum...she was given the opportunity to "escape" by enlisting in the BFI program. [Brides for Indians].... a secret government program.

This program NEVER REALLY HAPPENED IN OUR HISTORY.....the idea was tossed around and tossed out. FOR DAMN GOOD REASONS!!!

So... the MAJORITY of this book is FICTION. I read 98 pages --then skipped around reading - then jumped ahead and read the last 50 pages which includ ...more

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Nov 25, 2009 Hazel rated it did not like it

Shelves: historical-fiction, regrets-i-ve-had-a-few

I like historical fiction. I appreciate writers who take the time to research their stories well. I like to think that I'm catching up on some of the history I missed as the same time as enjoying a good read. I like journals and memoirs. And I jump at the chance to see history from the perspective of those who are usually written out of the history books. So I was quite enthusiastic when I heard about this novel which is written in the form of the journal of a nineteenth-century Yankee woman liv ...more

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Dec 30, 2011 Chaybyrd rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2012

First let me say, it seems among GR readers that this book stinks. And I get the criticism, I do. However, I have to say that I found this an enjoyable read.

Yes, the voice of Ms. Dodd, our heroine, protagonist, would be feminist (well sort of pseudo feminist) - does sound more 20th Century and less like a believable 19th Century even 'modern' woman but honestly, it kind of made the book more readable to me. I have no interest in hearing a modern writer trying to trifle through old English in a ...more

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Dec 07, 2007 Sara rated it it was ok

Shelves: historical-fiction, unfinished, 20th-century-fiction

This is somewhat erroneously in my "read" shelf. I did not finish reading it, so keep that in mind as far as this review goes. I applaud the author's project - historical fiction disguised as history proper (I tend to love things like that), it is a well-researched story told via the faux journals of a 19th-century white woman who went to live among the Cheyenne. My problem with this book is essentially that I did not ever buy the voice in which it is told - this problem has two tiers: First, it ...more

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Jun 27, 2013 Caroline rated it it was ok

Shelves: read-2013, historical-fiction, dudes-trying-to-write-ladies, native-american-history, two-star

Once upon a time, there was an Cheyenne chief called Little Wolf and a drunken US President named Ulysses S. Grant. After Grant made a horrible fool of himself by being a white guy, Little Wolf was like, "Look, we're matrilineal, so why not just let us have some white ladies to marry and procreate with? We don't even need cool white ladies. You can give us the nice ugly ones. And the pretty crazy ones. But not the crazy ugly ones because that seems like a bit much." And thus the Brides for India ...more

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Dec 23, 2008 Chellis rated it did not like it

If this book was not assigned to me for my book club, I wouldn't have wasted my time to read it. Not only is Fergus' novel, overly sentimental, historically inaccurate, misogynistic, it is racist towards Native Americans. AND it's all told in my least favorite method of narration: the journal entry. Chapters will often begin with, "So much has happened since my last entry, I don't know where to begin...." This is an easy tool to push time forward, and overdone in poorly written novels.

Fergus' n ...more

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Aug 04, 2012 Sandi *~The Pirate Wench~* rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction-romance

At a peace conference at Fort Laramie in 1854, a prominent northern Cheyenne Chief requested of the US army the gift of one thousand white women as brides for his young warriors.
Although this was an actual historical event, the story of May Dodd and her journals is entirely a work of fiction by the author.
The Cheyenne's request was not well received by the white authorities, and the peace conference collapsed and the Cheyenne's were actually sent home.
The white women did not go. But in this nove At a peace conference at Fort Laramie in 1854, a prominent northern Cheyenne Chief requested of the US army the gift of one thousand white women as brides for his young warriors.
Although this was an actual historical event, the story of May Dodd and her journals is entirely a work of fiction by the author.
The Cheyenne's request was not well received by the white authorities, and the peace conference collapsed and the Cheyenne's were actually sent home.
The white women did not go. But in this novel they do..and what if?
What would have happened?
The story begins with a remarkable woman named May Dodd who travels west into the unknown and marries the Chief of the Cheyenne Nation.
May Dodd tells her story through fictional diaries of the fate she left behind being committed to an insane asylum, having her babies taken away from her by her blueblood family for the "crime" of loving a man without marriage and beneath her station.
May's only hope for freedom is to sign up to a secret government program where women from the "civilized" world become brides to the Cheyenne warriors.
What follows is a breathtaking adventure of May Dodd, her brief but passionate romance with the gallant Army Captain John Bourke, her marriage to the great Chief Little Wolf and her conflict of being caught between not only two worlds but loving two men and living two lives.
What I liked about this story, was May Dodd was an incredible woman living in her time and the author did a splendid job writing from the perspective of a woman with such credibility told through her journals.
There was enough historical backdrop/details without it becoming "over-detailed" so that it took away from the story/characters.
The secondary characters (the women May travelled with) was also well done and balanced so that they too weren't distracting from May's story, and the bond that grew with these women was also neatly woven within the telling.
When I picked up this book,I thought it would be a "dry as the prairie" that they travelled on and on kinda book.
Not so! A fantastic tale of the Old West and the Native American Indians, a superb tale of sorrow, loss, sacrifice, suspense, and most of all love and triumph.
And it's not often when a book leaves this reader eagerly waiting to turn the next page to find out what will happen next.
Highly recommend this book and I'm looking forward to this authors sequel!

Edit to review: Due to the historical time period this story was set in
and although not in graphic detail,there are scenes of violence,rape and other subject matter that may not appeal to some readers. ...more

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Aug 28, 2007 MacDuff rated it it was ok

Recommends it for: Anyone who can overlook history

Shelves: booksreadin2007

This book was really disappointing.

The premise begins with a re-telling of the proposed "Brides for Indians" pact that went on in 1854, when a whole host of Cheyenne Native Americans came into DC and asked for 1000 white women to take back to the prairie. Their idea was that by impregnating the women, they'd put the Native American seed into Caucasian culture and thus assimilate it.

Ok, so that never happened. But for Jim Fergus, he lets his imagination roll with the idea that it did. Enter May This book was really disappointing.

The premise begins with a re-telling of the proposed "Brides for Indians" pact that went on in 1854, when a whole host of Cheyenne Native Americans came into DC and asked for 1000 white women to take back to the prairie. Their idea was that by impregnating the women, they'd put the Native American seed into Caucasian culture and thus assimilate it.

Ok, so that never happened. But for Jim Fergus, he lets his imagination roll with the idea that it did. Enter May Dodd, a woman who fell in love with a guy who worked for her father and was (obviously) below her station in life. Institutionalized for promiscuity after she gives birth to two children, May is eligible for the Brides program because she is obviously fertile.

I really thought that I was going to like this book, and be able to read it over a weekend. Instead, factual misrepresentation totally got the best of me. Dates are just wrong. I can't imagine what Fergus' editor was doing when he sent in this book. For instance, there's this point where Dodd, who is writing in 1874/75, mentioned the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The CSO was begun in 1891. I hate to ask people to look up these references, but please.

Also problematic is Fergus' idea of what thoughts went through women's heads in the mid-1800s. Apparently, women were spritely, not afraid to stand up for themselves, and spoke out in crowds of men. I wouldn't call myself a traditionalist, but at the very least give an accurate portrayal of what life was like for us back in 1874.

And finally, it just seems like the author wasn't paying any sort of attention to his character. For instance, May Dodd undergoes this "treatment" in the asylum for promiscuity. Her vagina is injected with boiling hot water at regular intervals. She is also raped repeatedly by the orderlies. However, she gets out of the institution and is sleeping with a man almost immediately. It just isn't believable.

In another passage, May recounts how she and a few of the other brides have totally given up their Western attire for Native American clothing. They don't even remember WHERE their skirts and blouses are. However, when one of them has the idea to hit the sweat lodge with the rest of the Native American men, they all pull out the cotton towel they packed for just this sort of instance. Again, it's just not believable.

In something like Phillippa Gregory's books, you can overcome any factual problems because you're reading a bodice ripper. While Fergus says right at the front of the book that this is a work of fiction, you still have to do your research. ...more

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Sep 11, 2011 Amy Sheridan rated it did not like it

Shelves: abandoned

If I were a member of the Cheyenne tribe featured in this book, my Indian name would be Couldn't-Finish-The-Book. If Jim Fergus were a member of the tribe, his Indian name would be Has-Never-Spoken-To-A-Woman-For-Any-Amount-Of-Time because... really. Oh, and the Indian name of this book would be Fail-Order-Brides.

I will start off by saying that I've never been a fan of historical fiction or books written as journals, but the premise of this book piqued my interest. I wasn't even slightly put off ...more

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Dec 26, 2016 Hiroto rated it did not like it

Shelves: babbled, failed-character-development, give-me-a-big-red-pen, booooring, why-the-hype, dnf

If you read the top reviews, however good the total rating is, you'll see the book has kinda bad reputation, and lemme tell you : it earned it. All of it. What a fuckin sham this book is.

I think this is the book I hated the most this year. Actually, more than that, it angered me until I couldn't take it anymore and basically threw it across the room. I want to burn the piece of garbage.

The plot promised me strong and independent women, I got a bunch of clichés :
-the swiss shehulk with bowling ba ...more

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Aug 21, 2008 Elizabeth rated it did not like it

Recommended to Elizabeth by: Book Club

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I read this for book club and felt distracted by the quality of writing, and therefore unable to even entertain the implausible historical premise. Maybe that is my own shortcoming. I just have a difficult time buying into a "journal" which contains pages of dialogue and real time events, and a voice that constantly contradicts itself and clearly belongs in a different century... but I tried to ignore this. As I read on, it became clear that while the author did his history homework, and has an I read this for book club and felt distracted by the quality of writing, and therefore unable to even entertain the implausible historical premise. Maybe that is my own shortcoming. I just have a difficult time buying into a "journal" which contains pages of dialogue and real time events, and a voice that constantly contradicts itself and clearly belongs in a different century... but I tried to ignore this. As I read on, it became clear that while the author did his history homework, and has an obvious acquaintance with American topography, he had great difficulty getting into the mind of a woman, let alone a 19th century woman! (i.e. gang raped and "fine" within a month or so, pregnant, yet walking/horseback-riding great distances without mention or concern of said pregnancy, blushing and giggling after losing one's virginity doggy-style, the list goes on...) I found his stereotypes to be tiresome, and the whole story felt very contrived, particularly the relationships he "explores" throughout the novel (which in my opinion reach little to no depth). The caricatures he presents belong in a comedy, and while this novel has its humorous moments, it is ultimately a dramatic portrayal of the hardships of frontier life, and the clash between the spiritual but doomed Native Americans and the white man's Manifest Destiny.

It seems readers love most about the novel its heroine, May, for her brazen ways, fortitude in peril, and feminist ideals. Please. This character is being spoon fed to 21st century women readers. A much more likable, realistic, and complex version of this same character is Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody, who fits in perfectly in Peters' light-hearted, adventurous historical mysteries. And while Peabody would be the first to join the men for a whiskey and soda, contemplating the next "course of action," she would never, for her own amusement, make a mockery of a culture's ritualistic and spiritual traditions! Compared to the fully developed Peabody, May is a mere stick figure, propped up by the author in effort to sell his book. ...more

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Jul 11, 2012 Barbara rated it really liked it

This is an excellent novel about an 1800's government program to send 1000 white women to marry into the Cheyenne Indian tribe in exchange for 1000 horses.

The plan is for the Caucasian-Indian couples to have children, which will theoretically promote peace between Indians and settlers.

Most of the women in the program are volunteers from prisons and insane asylums, though the dozen or so females in the story are 'nice girls' who got locked up due to unfortunate circumstances.

The novel is compo ...more

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Nov 20, 2007 Michelle rated it liked it

Shelves: bookclub

I have to agree with several of the previous reviewers... GREAT premise (exchange of 1,000 white women for peace - an offer actually made, but declined by Grant) and interesting insight into Native American culture. However, I had some of the same gripes as previous reviewers. For one, I thought the writing was very mediocre, it was abound with cliches. If the narrator referred to one more person being "rough around the edges" I was going to scream. Not to mention "he made my skin crawl." And, a ...more

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May 08, 2007 cherishwit rated it really liked it

Quite a good read.

From Booklist, by Grace Fill

An American western with a most unusual twist, this is an imaginative fictional account of the participation of May Dodd and others in the controversial "Brides for Indians" program, a clandestine U.S. government^-sponsored program intended to instruct "savages" in the ways of civilization and to assimilate the Indians into white culture through the offspring of these unions. May's personal journals, loaded with humor and intelligent reflection, de ...more

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Jan 10, 2009 Elizabeth of Silver's Reviews rated it it was amazing

Shelves: loved, recommend, it, this, book-i, completely, favorites

Loved the book...it is in journal form and tells of how the government asked the American Indians to trade one thousand white women for horses...their main reason was to "civilize" the Indians and make them aware of and become familiar with the white people's way of life.

Very interesting book...topic not as bad as it sounds. ...more

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May 26, 2017 TL rated it really liked it

Recommended to TL by: Paperbackswap

3.5 stars... an interesting look at "what could have happened" if history had gone a little differently .

Hard to get fully into at first, but still fascinating. When it did pull me in, I was hooked.. dragged a bit near the end but was never boring (part of that may have been me having an idea or two of what was happening and dreading it too)

The way May's journal entries are written, it feels like you have gone back in time and catching a glimpse of a forgotten past. It feels like I could have b ...more

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Aug 17, 2007 Mary Helene rated it did not like it

It's a bodice-ripper! It took me to page 80 to figure that out and then I laughed aloud. Tana recommended it to me, and I usually value her recommendations, but I forgot that this is a genre she finds fun. I was just so disappointed. This book would appeal to those who like the "Outlander" series. There is the heroine who has no faults or failings but who is consistently misunderstood. There are evil characters lurking on the edges, but she feels safe in the arms of a series of fantastic heroes ...more

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Oct 14, 2018 Karina rated it did not like it

DNF- Page 200... I have to stop reading this book. I can be away from it for months and not think about it.... I am sure that is a bad sign to any book... I've been skimming it and have not missed a single thing going on... I really really wanted to like this book. The title and cover were interesting to me & May Dodd was a real life relative to the author; yet Fergus couldn't get the story to be cohesive. I would have liked that May Dodd had her own personal story instead of the gov't sending 1 ...more

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Mar 31, 2012 Kkop12 rated it really liked it

Shelves: bookclub

So I liked the entire book, especially the main character. However, I was a bit bummed by the end. And I even had a little trouble figuring out who the characters were in the final pages (lineage). But what a well written book. I had never read a book about Indians, and while I am sure it only scratched the surface of their customs and way of life, it did present a lot of information about them. In the end though, it was ironic that the main character was unable to identify with either the India ...more

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Dec 18, 2008 Christa rated it really liked it

Shelves: library

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd is a very interesting and original book. In 1854 a Cheyenne chief proposed a plan to exchange 1000 horses for 1000 white brides for his warriors. The plan was rejected, but Fergus basis his fictional novel on a similar situation set in 1875. In the novel, the Cheyenne are promised 1000 white brides, and May Dodd, resident of an insane asylum, is one of the women selected. The character May Dodd was a strong woman and her story was compelling.

187 One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd is a very interesting and original book. In 1854 a Cheyenne chief proposed a plan to exchange 1000 horses for 1000 white brides for his warriors. The plan was rejected, but Fergus basis his fictional novel on a similar situation set in 1875. In the novel, the Cheyenne are promised 1000 white brides, and May Dodd, resident of an insane asylum, is one of the women selected. The character May Dodd was a strong woman and her story was compelling.

1875 finds May Dodd living in an insane asylum in Chicago. Her parents placed her there unwillingly because she was living with a man of a much lower social station without the benefit of marriage. May and her lover had two children together, and her wealthy parents used her promiscuity as means to have her committed. The asylum is a hopeless place, and May misses her beloved children greatly. When she is offered the opportunity to go west as a bride for a Cheyenne warrior in order to help assimilate the tribe into the white culture, she decides that this may be her only possibility of leaving the asylum. She journeys west with a group of other "brides," many of them from prisons or other undesirable situations. On the journey to meet her bridegroom, May comes to have deep feelings for an army officer. Knowing that their relationship is hopeless, May resolutely goes to her new home with the Cheyenne. She finds her new husband to be a man of honor, and she greatly respects him. As May and the other women who journeyed with her settle into their new lives, the U.S. government decides not to honor their bargain but to instead force these Cheyenne to a reservation. When violence strikes the Cheyenne in the form of the U.S. Army, many of the brides and their new families come to a tragic end.

I enjoyed this book. I quickly became caught up in the story, and was saddened by the tragic end that came to many of the characters. May Dodd was an unusual, but likeable heroine. I enjoyed the manner in which the beginning and end of the book take place in the present with one of her desendants searching for information about May after the family story of her dying in the Chicago asylum is derailed. ...more

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Nov 10, 2012 MAP rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction

1.5 stars.

This is another one of those disappointing books where the idea is really neat and the execution is incredibly bad. The main issue is how flawed the writing of the characters is. For one thing, he seems to confuse people having accents for people having personalities. There are Irish accents, southern accents, German accents. And he WRITES OUT the accents, which is supremely annoying. (He also sporadically writes things in French and then doesn't translate them.) On top of that, there' ...more

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Jul 18, 2007 Rachel rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: no one

I fear I'm going to be overly harsh on this book. First, this book took me 3 months to read, which is nearly unheard of, especially for ~300 pages. I kept wanting to just stop reading, but I wanted to finish it so I could say I finished it.
The basic story of the book I think is intriguing and could be the basis for a really good book if done correctly. I just think the author missed terribly here. The book is bogged down by dialogue, and crappy dialogue at that. He felt it necessary to write con ...more

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Apr 11, 2008 Erica rated it it was ok

Why did I read this book? Two words: book club.

Yes, after a lifetime of avoiding book clubs, perhaps its fitting that in my latest job one of my tasks is to lead a book club. And guess what the first title is?

On the plus side, it was a quick read. An amalgamation of cliches and trite characters (Noble Native Americans, uptight white people, a former slave who not only sings and dances good but is also the fastest runner in the tribe!), this is a basic tale of 1875, as the last Native Americans w ...more

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Mar 12, 2019 Karen rated it really liked it

“I, personally, have resolved never to display weakness, to be always strong and firm and forthright, to show neither fear nor uncertainty-- no matter how fearful and uncertain I may be inside; I see no other way to survive this ordeal.”

I really enjoyed this book. I have been meaning to read it for years. It is a fictional story written in the form of a series of journals about a true event that occurred in 1854, when Chief Little Wolf, of the Cheyenne Tribe met with US President Uly ...more

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Jul 09, 2007 Jennifer Love rated it liked it · review of another edition

The friend who loaned me this book raved about it, and I really trust her opinion. However, I just couldn't love this book. It is an interesting topic-it's based on a true bit of history, when the Native Americans and the U.S. were trying to integrate, and the Native Americans requested 1000 of American white women to help the process and have their children. Of course, Grant turned it down, but this book is a fictional account of what might have been. It was an extremely interesting idea, and I ...more

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Aug 25, 2017 Katie B rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: native-american, fiction, historical-fiction, 1800s, giveaways, read-in-2017, life-of-a-book-addict

According to the author, at a peace conference in 1854, a Cheyenne Indian chief asked U.S. Army authorities for the gift of 1000 women. The idea was these women would become the brides of young Indian warriors and produce offspring which would lead to assimilation into the white man's world. This request was not well received and declined. In this fictional book however, President Ulysses S. Grant agrees to the proposal and women from different backgrounds are sent out west to become wives. The ...more

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Jun 20, 2008 Lois rated it really liked it

A fascinating look at life among the Cheyenne Indians in 1874 from the perspective of a white woman who is part of a US govt. program to assimilate the natives. The landscape is perfectly described and family and communal life is portrayed in great detail in a supposed journal with accompanying letters and bibliography. It appears to be well researched, but my problem with this kind of historical fiction is always wondering just how much IS true (were the Indians really THAT brutal?) The too-goo ...more

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Nov 09, 2011 Melodie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

An actual event is the premise for this story set in the late 1800s. But what actually happened doesn't at all resemble what the author puts forth.As the white man encroached on the land of the native people, treaty after treaty was made and broken. A delegation led by Cheyenne leader, Little Wolf met with then President Grant to try to once again come to an understanding that would allow the native people to maintain their land and lifestyle. Basically, in exchange for residing on a specified ...more

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About Jim Fergus

Jim Fergus

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Jim Fergus was born in Chicago on March 23, 1950. He attended high school in Massachusetts and graduated as an English major from Colorado College in 1971. He has traveled extensively and lived over the years in Colorado, Florida, the French West Indies, Idaho, France, and Arizona. For ten years he worked as a teaching tennis professional in Colorado and Florida, and in 1980 moved to the tiny town Jim Fergus was born in Chicago on March 23, 1950. He attended high school in Massachusetts and graduated as an English major from Colorado College in 1971. He has traveled extensively and lived over the years in Colorado, Florida, the French West Indies, Idaho, France, and Arizona. For ten years he worked as a teaching tennis professional in Colorado and Florida, and in 1980 moved to the tiny town of Rand, Colorado (pop. 13), to begin his career as a full-time freelance writer. He was a contributing editor of Rocky Mountain Magazine, as well as a correspondent of Outside magazine. His articles, essays, interviews and profiles have appeared in a wide variety of national magazines and newspapers, including Newsweek, Newsday, The Denver Post, the Dallas-Times Herald, Harrowsmith Country Life, The Paris Review, MD Magazine, Savvy, Texas Monthly, Esquire, Fly Fisherman, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, and Field & Stream. His first book, a travel/sporting memoir titled, A Hunter's Road, was published by Henry Holt in 1992. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Kirsch called A Hunter's Road, "An absorbing, provocative, and even enchanting book."

Fergus' first novel, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd was published by St. Martin's Press in 1998. The novel won the 1999 Fiction of the Year Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association, and has become a favorite selection of reading groups across the country. It has since sold over 250,000 copies in the United States. An international bestseller, One Thousand White Women (Milles Femmes Blanches) was also on the French bestseller list for fifty-seven weeks and has sold well over 400,000 copies in that country.

In 1999, Jim Fergus published a collection of outdoor articles and essays, titled The Sporting Road. And in the spring of 2005, his second novel, The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles was published by Hyperion Press. An historical fiction set in the 1930's in Chicago, Arizona, and the Sierra Madre of Mexico, The Wild Girl has also been embraced by reading groups all across the United States. Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump called it, "an exhilarating and suspenseful tale that makes the heart soar."

In 2011, Fergus published a family historical fiction in France entitled, MARIE-BLANCHE. The novel spans the entire 20th century, and tells the devastating tale of the complicated and ultimately fatal relationship between the author’s French mother and grandmother. The American edition of MARIE-BLANCHE will be published in the United States in 2014.

In the spring of 2013, Fergus published another novel in France, CHRYSIS: Portrait d’Amour, a love story set in 1920′s Paris and based on the life of a actual woman painter, Chrysis Jungbluth. Reviewing CHRYSIS in French ELLE magazine, Olivia de Lamberterie,wrote: “This novel is an arrow through the heart.”

Chrysis has just been published in America with the title THE MEMORY OF LOVE.

Jim Fergus divides his time between southern Arizona, northern Colorado, and France.
http://jimfergus.com/bio/ ...more