Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd, by Jim Fergus

The Story: I guess that when the government was trying to “figure it all out” with the Native Americans, they had a big get together where they were discussing what could be done to foster peace between the two groups.  One of the Cherokee Indian groups said that in their culture, whatever tribe the mother is a part of is the tribe that the children belongs to.  They suggested that, in exchange for a thousand horses, that the government get together one thousand women to be the Indians’ wives and their children would be this generation that would make peace between the groups possible.  In reality, the government was totally appalled and ended the peace talks.  Jim Fergus took this little piece of info and played a little game of “what if?”… what if the government would have rounded up one thousand women and handed them over to the Indian tribe?  That is the basis of this book.

The book centers around the life of May Dodd, a woman who was in a mental institute for “promiscuity” because she lived with and had children with a man that she was not married to.  Instead of living the rest of her life in this horrible institute, she decided to take this get-out-of-the-mental-institute-free card and become an Indian’s wife.  Eek.  This is written like her journal of that time period, also including letter that she wrote back home.

What I Thought: I’ve been noticing more and more books that don’t have a plot outline or anything on the back of them, just little blurbs.   I got two books at the used bookstore this past week and both of them just have blurbs on the back. That’s all this one has too. I probably never would have bought this book had there bee an outline on the back, so I guess that it worked out well for them this time around. I have never really been into stories about Native Americans. I have no idea why.  Even in elementary school, when we had to read books about Native Americans, I would get annoyed.  I think it’s a fascinating subject and don’t mind non-fiction about it, but for some reason fiction books about Native Americans get on my nerves.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t like this book, but I’m pretty sure that it had nothing to do with it being about Native Americans. In fact, I kind of thought that the little tidbits of fact that were offered up were interesting and that the Indian characters were the best in the book.

I just hated Mary Dodd.  She was the main character and she was totally unlikeable.  She was full of herself and unwilling to bend or change and just kind of annoying.  She lacks any kind of emotional depth.  The other American women who were with her were just straight up cliches and even the ones that I ‘liked’ kind of made me roll my eyes.

I also hated her journal.  I don’t mind this “style” of writing- in letters and journals- if it is done well.  This wasn’t done well.  The voice was absolutely nothing like you would expect from a woman in the 1870’s (while pregnant, she describes herself as ‘as big as a house’…. really?!) and it was beyond obvious that it was written by a man.  The only time this works is when it is convincing, and this was not. I do want to add that the ‘big as a house’ bit wasn’t the only anachronism, just the one that came to mind first.  This bad boy was chock full of them.  If you want to read a well done version of the historical-fiction-as-journal, check out Impatient with Desire.  That book has everything this book was missing.

I guess I’m coming down pretty hard on ol’ Jim Fergus, huh?   To his benefit, the story was fast paced and compelling.  It had an easy flow and it was broken up into ‘notebooks’ and into the individual journal entries so that really kept it moving a long.  I found myself skimming towards the middle, but at the end it really does pick up and the story starts to pack a lot of steam.  I think that had I cared what ultimately happened to May Dodd, I would have been at the edge of my seat.

Conclusion: Like I said earlier, if you want to read what this should have been, check out Impatient with Desire.  So good. This one? Meh. I feel perfectly comfortable telling you to skip it.