07 November 2006

One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus

Fiction: Historical. Audiobook from The Audio Partners. Published in 1999. Recorded in 2006. Read by Laura Hicks. Purchased from Amazon.com.

Some of my friends at church started a book club. This of course, makes me extremely happy. This is our second book club selection. One of our club members made some comments about the book -- something she said that happened that made her put the book down and have a hard time picking it up. She wouldn't say what it was that made her do that, so as I read I kept expecting something horrendous to happen, which kinda made me enjoy the book less. And, strangely enough I could not figure out what on earth caused her to do that. The book is a bit racy in some spots, but I don't think that is what she meant. So, I've got to wait until the beginning of December to find out what it is she was talking about. Maybe I can grill her at church tomorrow night. I'm not sure I can wait until next month.


Publisher's summary:
"I leave this record for my dear children, in the event that they never see their loving mother again and so that they might one day know the truth of my unjust incarceration, my escape from Hell, and into whatever is to come in these pages..."
--from the journals of May Dodd

Based on an actual historical event but told through fictional diaries, this is the story of a remarkable woman who travels west in 1875 and marries the chief of the Cheyenne Nation.

One Thousand White Women begins with May Dodd's journey west, into the unknown. Yet the unknown is a far better fate than the life she left behind: committed to an insane asylum by her blueblood family for the crime of loving a man beneath her station, May finds that her only hope of freedom is to participate in a secret government program whereby women from the "civilized" world become the brides of Cheyenne warriors. What follows is the story of May's breathtaking adventures: her 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 two worlds, loving two men, living two lives.

So vividly has Jim Fergus depicted the American West that May Dodd's journals are like a capsule in time.


Online book shopping:
Powell's: One Thousand White Women
amazon.co.uk: One Thousand White Women
amazon.com: One Thousand White Women
Audible.com: Not currently available as audio from Audible. You can find it on Amazon on CD's at: One Thousand White Women

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