By Jim Fergus
Look closely at the cover of this book. It tells so much of the story. The beat up library copy I read made it hard to see but notice the script, the quality of the paper, the necklace, the bullet hole... it's rich with detail, like this book. I have to say I loved this one and read it in three or four days.
The books starts a re-imagining of history: in 1854, a Cheyenne Indian chief asked US army officials for 1000 white women as brides for his tribe, which would help assimilate his people into the white world. That did not happen, but in this book it did. May Dodd is the fictional journal writer who accepts this offer, escaping an unfair incarceration in an insane asylum to go marry and have the baby of an Indian. The story is told as if May's ancestor is finding her journal and telling her story for the first time. To the white world, that is. She is a legend already to the Cheyenne.
The fact that I just wrote the end of that paragraph with consideration of how the whites and Indians perceive the story, shows that this book has got into my brain. While it's a totally engrossing story, and full of really hilarious and lovable (or despicable) characters, it's also so much about how the two different cultures collide. May Dodd really becomes an Indian, and thus is able to present much of the story from both points of view. I found myself really torn with who to "side" with at times. I think it's a really balanced telling of a pretty horrible time in American history. But also, the story doesn't get lost in the history. This is about May and her family, which is really comprised of both the white women she goes west with and the Cheyenne family she marries into. It's a love story and an adventure and I got lost in their world. I want to get "Dances with Wolves" on Netflix now and watch it. Probably my husband won't want to watch it with me, though, and there are some scenes in that movie (like this book) that are too horrible to watch alone.
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