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Book Summary and Reviews of One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus

One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus

One Thousand White Women

The Journals of May Dodd

by Jim Fergus

  • Readers' Rating (8):
  • Published:
  • Mar 1998, 304 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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.

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 into the white man's world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime. Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"An impressive historical...terse, convincing, and affecting." —Kirkus Reviews

"A 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

"Jim 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

This information about One Thousand White Women was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Jim Fergus

Jim Fergus is field editor and monthly columnist for Sports Afield magazine and also writes a monthly feature on the AllOutdoors.com website. His work has appeared in numerous national magazines and newspapers, and he is the author of the nonfiction book A Hunter's Road. He lives in northern Colorado.

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