Rating: 
Summary: Best Story Read in Years
Review: I loved this book as did my entire book club. I've bought it for several friends as presents and they loved the book also. As I read it I felt like the characters were surrounding my bed (I was primarily reading in bed) and talking to me. It was an intrigingly good read. When it ended I sobbed for a good few minutes - the emotionality of the story, the let down of letting go of the characters, the ending of the sage, the way the Indians and women were treated in teh end... Quite a few other people I know had the same reaction. A thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying read. I found May Dodd believeable, her family horrificly believable and each separate character stuck out uniquely with their own voice. Basing a novel on one historical truth and then taking it from there helped make this book fascinating, as if, what if...I felt like I learned a lot as I read which is also fun. It has been pleasantly surprising how much everyone I have recommended this book to has enjoyed it. Hats off to Jim Fergus for producing such a good read!
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Fiction Read
Review: I enjoyed 1000 White Women very much although some of it felt unbelievable at times. I was also bothered by the fact that a lot of the story seemed stolen right off the pages of the novel Little Big Man, a book I love.Written as a journal, it was also difficult to beleive the frank and intimate revelations that May Dodd shared. Certainly a l990's honesty that was inconprehensible during the 1890's. All in all, we come to see the brides respect and love for the Cheyene people and their ways as well as the closeness that women feel towards one another during their hardships. This is a book that I would recommend as well as Little Big Man.
Rating:
Summary: excellent read
Review: I absolutely enjoyed this book! It was both historically interesting and educational as well as an entertaining great read. I will check out more of Jim Fergus' books and would like for him to know how much I loved this book
Rating: 
Summary: One Thousand Tiresome Women
Review: Much of this book is stunningly unbelievable. May Dodd and her cohorts are largely unlikeable. There's not much here to endear you to the Cheyenne's either. The most realistic encounters are those which depict May joining Little Wolf's family. The Cheyenne women are initially suspicious and May doesn't think much of them either. This is clearly a work of fiction and occasionally entertaining. Women and Cheyenne's should both find themselves insulted by Jim Fergus.
Rating:
Summary: A very good read
Review: If you want a good read that's a cut above the "easy readers" out there, this is a book for you. It's not an intellectual novel either but a well written tale, imaginative and fun. Romance, action and descriptive narrative make this a perfect Christmas book for your wife, mother or daughter -- or even your husband!
Rating:
Summary: Great work of fiction!
Review: This heart warming book leaves you wanting more. It is a great work of FICTION! Many reviews criticize it for its leaps of faith as far as the voice of May Dodd being more 1990s than 1870s or for how easily the "white women" assimilated to tribe life but that it is all part of the book's charm! As a mother my heart broke for May and the children she was forced to leave behind, as well as the children that were lost. May is a realistic and practical woman with lots of spirit! I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone!
Rating:
Summary: interesting but vaguely unsatisfying
Review: An interesting story but written in a way which only skims the surface of both characters and plot. You keep wanting the author to go deeper especially into his characters. Even May is only superficially written. Perhaps this is the result of Mr. Fergus being a journalist and not having do delve deep for his magazine articles? I would be interested to see future works, if only to see if this problem has been remedied.
Rating: 
Summary: An historical explanation
Review: Although my novel, One Thousand White Women, received very little critical attention at the time of its original publication, I have been extremely gratified by the tremendous response from readers, and by the fact that the novel has become a word-of-mouth book among readers and reading groups. However, there seems to be some confusion, partly of my own making, about the historical basis of One Thousand White and I'd like to try to clear that up. In the hardcover edition of my novel, there is an explanation in the Author's Note about the actual historical event that became the seed for this novel, a reference that I came across while researching a possible nonfiction book about the Northern Cheyenne Indians. For various reasons this explanation was left out of the paperback editon but will be reinstated in future printings. In 1854 a group of prominent Cheyenne chiefs attended a peace conference with representatives of the U.S. government at Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory. There the chiefs requested the gift of 1000 white women as brides for their young warriors. Because theirs was a matrilineal society, the Cheyennes believed that all of the children born of these unions would automatically be considered white people, thus allowing the next generation of Cheyennes to assimilate themselves into the white world. From the Cheyenne worldview this was a bold, ingenious, and also quite tragic proposal. It goes without saying that the notion of white women breeding with savages was not well received by the government authorites. The peace conference fell apart,the Cheyenne chiefs went home, and, of course, the white women did not come. Intrigued by the idea, I thought it a fascinating jumping-off point for a novel. What if? I changed the time-frame to the 1870's when things were really coming to a head in the Great Plains Indian wars and I had the great Cheyenne Chief Little Wolf make the request for brides of President Grant at a meeting in Washington D.C. Although at least one Amazon reader believed that this part of the novel was historically accurate, Little Wolf's visit to Washington as here portrayed is entirely fictitious as is the rest of the novel. Because the premise itself is so outlandish, I did a great deal of research to try to make the framework for the story as historically accurate as possible, and I used a number of actual historical figures as characters, although they are fictional creations. I spent a month or so on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana, and read hundreds of frontier journals, as well as numerous other reference materials which are cited in the bibliography at the end of the novel. I should also like to say that while this book is inevitably classified as "historical fiction" it is more accurately "alternate historical fiction". And while I hope that it is written in a pleasing style, the novel has no literary pretensions whatsoever. It aims simply to be a good tale well told, in a kind of Dickensian sense--full of larger than life (better that than smaller)characters propelled by the actual events of the time, which hurtle them along to an inevitable climax. Finally, I'd like to say that we authors depend on you readers, not only for our livelihood, but also for your very valuable feedback, both positive and negative. I wish we could make everyone happy but the act of reading is a subjective matter, and I thank all readers who have spent their money on my novel and have taken the time to read it and to respond.
Rating: 
Summary: The premise on which this book is based offers promise.
Review: The idea of basing a novel around an interesting but little-known fact - that Cheyenne Chief Little Wolf traveled East to Washington, D.C. to ask President Grant for "one thousand white women" to intermarry with members of his tribe - was a stroke of genius on the part of author, Jim Fergus. It is historical fact that the offer was made and whether the women's trip West actually happened does not detract from the novel. Jim Fergus is quite clear, from the outset, that the story is fictionalized. What does detract, however, is the fact that Mr. Fergus has not done his homework on Women's Issues. May Dodd is a contemporary, 1990's, woman plunked down in the 1880's. Even the language of her journal entries does not ring true as the language of the times. Scholars and historians have been looking to journals and letters of women in order to understand their place in a particular time period, rather than viewing their thoughts and feelings through the lens of an author or historian who may have been biased. Therefore,it seems ironic that Mr. Fergus would chose this format for his novel - the format of what is true - and then bend it to his will. If I were to use thisbook for a class reading, I would dub it "fantasy", and not historical fiction, the genre Mr. Fergus probably intended. There is a Paul Bunyan-esque quality to May. She is not only larger than life but so one-dimensional there is no space for the reader to develop his/her impressions about the character. We are constantly being pushed to embrace the author's point of view, that point of view being: "Isn't she wonderful?!". Coincidences occur which defy belief, frequently coincidences meant to bolster May's credibility and strength in the readers' eyes. Before the story even begins, we learn the extremely wealthy and well-positioned Chicago family, which dared to disown May, goes bankrupt. However,the young male family member, clearly smitten with her(what man isn't?)and wanting to learn about her life, is a highly successful magazine editor...and May Dodd's journals are considered "sacred tribal treasures" among the Cheyenne. These events continue(such as twins marrying twins, and both giving birth to twins)throughout the novel, and rather than giving credibility to the character or events, wear the reader down to the point of numbness. Most of the characters are, in fact, stereotyped and "cartoonish", which seems a shame when the relationships unfolding on the early train journey could have broadened as the novel unfolds. Mr. Fergus' depiction of the Cheyenne way of life seems accurate, and indeed, the passages relating the way they lived are among the most pleasing and vivid. Mr. Fergus' characterization of Little Wolf was one of his best. Unfortunately, he loses some of our respect as he develops too much patience for May - her lectures on war, how his tribe should not go to war. War was the way of life for the Plains Indians. Among the reviews listed on the book jacket and inside, none appears to be written by a Cheyenne. Their input is important.It is certainly possible to take some historic events, built a framework, and make up (or fictionalize) a story within those limits. Mr. Fergus, though, has really tried our patience.
Rating:
Summary: Good beach reading but NOT REALISTIC!
Review: It was an entertaining read but hardly great fiction and far from realistic. I felt like this was more in line of pulp fiction than literary fiction -- enjoyable but not memorable.
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