Rating: 
Summary: So realistic I kept checking to make sure it was FICTION!
Review: This book is one of the best books I've ever read. Although the author warns the reader that it is purely a fictional account, by the 2nd line of the introduction I could no longer tell what was true and what was fiction. So realistic were these diaries I felt myself wanting to know more about the main character, May Dodd, only to recall that she was a fictionalized character. It was also a great history lesson on early America and Indian life. This is a book I will recommend to friends and family without hesitation.
Rating: 
Summary: Noteworthy praise for ONE THOUSAND WHITE WOMEN
Review: "Jim Fergus's ONE THOUSAND WHITE WOMEN is a splendid, fresh, and engaging novel. If there were any justice...it would be a surefire bestseller. Strikingly original." --Jim Harrison (author of LEGENDS OF THE FALL) "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 WINTER, THE BOOK OF YAAK, and THE SKY, THE STARS, THE WILDERNESS) "Jim Fergus knows his country in a way that's evocative of 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 chronical of the Old West. It's a superb tale of sorrow, suspense, exultation, and triumph that leaves the reader waiting to turn the next page and then wonderfully wrung out at the end." --Winston Groom (author of FORREST GUMP) "In a word, ONE THOUSAND WHITE WOMEN is terrific! What Jim Fergus has done within these pages is give life and voice to an aspect of the American West and its native peoples that has been, if not covered up, too long overlooked. It is a tremendous achievement by a remarkable writer." --David Seybold (editor of BOATS and FATHERS AND SONS) "Jim Fergus's powerful first novel is a surefire winner. I read it nonstop and would now like to propose a hundred-year moratorium on all books about white women in the Old West, since it will take the rest of us at least that long to amass the research--not to mention the compassion--needed to equal this fine work. A masterful job!" --Robert F. Jones (author of TIE MY BONES TO HER BACK) "This is a rich, beautifully conceived, rollicking novel, literally bursting with original characters and with the profound joy and heartbreak of the real history of the American West. May Dodd may be the most compellingly alive fictional character of that history since Little Big Man." --Charles Gaines (author of A FAMILY PLACE, STAY HUNGRY, PUMPING IRON, AND SURVIVAL GAMES)
Rating:
Summary: An informative and entertaining read
Review: There are no good guys or bad guys in Jim Fergus' Old West. There is plenty of glory and blame for everybody involved in the highly-not-so-secret shipment of white women (and one "black white woman") to the Cheyenne for the purpose of breeding children to assimilate the Cheyenne into the white culture. Meticulous research reveals details of Indian life not commonly remembered today, more than a century after the setting of this story. Gone from the novel is the romantic notion of the Noble Savage, as is the notion that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." Gone, also, is the cavalry riding to the rescue. ONE THOUSAND WHITE WOMEN is not a Saturday afternoon matinee...but is an informative and entertaining read.
Rating:
Summary: A Heart Touching Read
Review: This was a wonderful story filled with rich characters, great detail and touching emotion. Good thing I didn't have anything pressing to do the day I started it...I was hardly able to put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: Bodice-ripper novel-lovers rejoice!
Review: How did the publisher miss getting Fabio to pose for the book jacket? This novel is purple in prose and preposterous in plot. And if that weren't enough, it's peppered with howler anachronisms. Would an American woman in the 1870s really use the word "sadistic?" True, she's quite adventurous, but Freud wasn't publishing yet and it's very unlikely she could have gotten her hands on de Sade.
Don't waste your time on this stinker.
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Summary: This novel was excellent!!
Review: My book club and I found May Dodd's early comments irritating and implausible. I couldn't imagine any woman of her era acting or thinking as she did. Her love life was impossible for a woman of her background and how she could have left her children seems highly unlikely. Had she jumped ship (so to speak) and left the train early on to get back to the children she SAYS she loves so much, it would have made sense - but then where would the author have been with his book idea? Nowhere! The women of pioneer days were courageous, serious and determined. I found May frivilous in her thoughts and many of her deeds. I hate to bash a writer as I'm sure the author worked hard on this novel, but for my group of 5 women, this novel just didn't seem reasonable. Maybe this is how Jim Fergus thinks a pioneer woman might behave, but we just never could come to terms with his ideas. Sorry, but we all agreed it was one of the worst offerings our club ever read!
Rating:
Summary: Our Book Club extremely disliked this book
Review: We thought the characters were unbelievable and one dimensional.
The entire book was a collection of the author's disjointed fantasies.
Rating: 
Summary: 1000 White Women
Review: I read this book while camping in Montana/Wyoming and found it to be extremely well-suited to my surroundings. I really could envision the American West of 150+ years ago and felt a connectedness to the characters.
Many of the other reviewers have commented on the credibility of the novel. I agree that there were questions regarding the credibility of our NARRARATOR (May Dodd) but I do not think this is a fault of the novel. In reading any novel the first question one should ask is whether you trust your narrator -- after all, the story will be told through their perceptions. A narrator's credibility is even at issue in such classics as Wuthering Heights. Oftentimes, the more carefully written narrators will cause the readers the most doubt and distress. Have you ever given up on a novel simply because you could not tolerate the narrator?
In this instance, we are told from the start that May Dodd is NOT credible. . . she was committed to a lunatic asylum, her many generations of her family considered her to be insane, and she clearly perceives her world differently than those surrounding her. In fact, she prides herself for being unconventional and having a perspective that is far from the norm of her society. Especially in her letters to her sister, it is clear that she is trying to shock her audiance. But in her letters to her children or to Henry Ames, she is painting herself as a martyr. It is not difficult to accept that May considers herself to be superior to the other brides, describes herself as a hero and leader, or that she believes that all the men she meets lust after her (and that they are the most desirable of men).
Futher, there has been a lot of criticism regarding May Dodd's descriptions of sexual encounters. Many reviewers have considered these discriptions to be gratuitious or something from romance novels. However, considering that our narrator has been charged with permiscuity, it is not surprising that she would gloat about her exploits including the seduction of John Bourke among others. May is unguarded about being very sexually aggressive and sometimes her narrative regarding these matters is giddy to the brink of hysteria. These were the moments when I thought. . .maybe she is insane. . . perhaps she is a scarlett woman. . .was her family was right about her?
While many of the characters are painted with broad brush strokes, I think this too can be defended. First, again, our narrator has her own limitations. Secondly, given the reach of this book, the author had to rely on some social cues and a - for lack of a better phrase - common language of the readers that would quickly bring the readers into the novel. Also, the author should at least be recognized for his command of dialect. Creating a multi-ethnic group gave him an opportunity to display his abilities. We can't fault him for showing off just a bit.
Finally, I was very impressed by the author's attentive research into the Chyenne and other Native American cultures. It appears that he did his homework and this novel encouraged me to learn more about our earliest Americans. That, in of itself, is quite an accomplishment.
Rating:
Summary: A Heart Touching Read
Review: This was a wonderful story filled with rich characters, great detail and touching emotion. Good thing I didn't have anything pressing to do the day I started it...I was hardly able to put it down.
Rating:
Summary: Alternative history
Review: I don't think I've read a book like this before. It's an interesting alternative look at frontier history and US/Cheyanne relations. The various women in the book are nicely flushed out as characters rather than being cookie cutter versions of the narrator. I've read actual diary accounts from women on the frontier from this time period and the style of May's prose fits with those actual journels, making it hard to remember at times that this story is in fact a novel.
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