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Women's History
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Narrator
Laura Hicks
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Length
14 hours 54 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“Have you ever wonder what if this happened another way than it actually did? Well that’s exactly what this author wrote. He took a fact from history and wrote what it could have been like had the government said yes to the deal the chief of this tribe requested by exchanging 1,000 white women to marry and birth a child with the natives in return for horses. Yes it sounds insane but it’s intriguing to read an alternate version of reality with so many true facts mixed into this story. These women were anxious and scared yet ready to serve their country anyway they could. They immersed themselves into a whole new way of life from what they’ve always known. This is a favorite of our local book stores book club.”
— Danielle • The Book Center
Based on an actual historical event, 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 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.“Fergus portrays the perceptions and emotions of women…with tremendous insight and sensitivity.”—Booklist“A superb tale of sorrow, suspense, exultation, and triumph.” —Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump
Jim Fergus is the author of One Thousand White Women, The Sporting Road, A Hunter’s Road and Wild Girl. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of national magazines and newspapers, including Newsweek, Newsday, The Paris Review, Esquire, Sports Afield, and Field & Stream. Fergus was born in Chicago and attended Colorado College. He worked as a teaching tennis professional before becoming a full-time freelance writer. He lives in southern Arizona.
Laura Hicks is an Obie Award–winning actress who has appeared on Broadway, off Broadway, and in regional theater, film, and television. A native New Yorker and a Juilliard graduate, she has performed throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Australia, Austria, Italy, and Ireland.
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Reviews
“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.”
“A rich, imaginative harvest of historical detail.”
“Jim Fergus so skillfully envelopes us in the heart and mind and skin of his main character…that we weep when she mourns…and our hearts pound when she is in danger.”
“Fergus is gifted in his ability to portray the perceptions and emotions of women. He writes with tremendous insight and sensitivity…This book is artistically rendered with meticulous attention to details that bring to life the daily concerns of a group of hardly souls at a pivotal time in US history.”
“An impressive historical, terse, convincing, and affecting.”
“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.”
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