June Book List

Just one for this month! Don't get me wrong- it's not that I haven't been reading (heaven forbid)- it's just that I've been taking a break from reading for pleasure and started trying my hand at reading that will challenge me. So far, it's nothing worth reporting, but a teacher on summer has to find a way to keep her mind busy!

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

As a genre, Historical Fiction presents a unique to imagine what might have been. In this case, the story stems from a peace conference in 1854 whereat Leaders of a Northern Cheyenne tribe requested a gift of white women, whom they would marry, in order that their eventual offspring might be born into "their mother's tribe" and help with Native American assimilation into white society. If you carefully start the book by reading the author's note (which I did not), it is quite clear that beyond this peace conference, nothing ever became of this unusual request. One Thousand White Women imagines a scenario where something did.
The story is told through one woman's fictional journals and letters, and although this choice of point of view and narration

could at times be tiresome, the story and characters and landscape all came to life (even with such an unbelievable premise). Through the eyes of a woman not unlike myself, I felt I could see what it would have been like to leave civilization behind and come to know a new way of life. I developed an even greater sense of respect for this ancient culture and learned a lot about the struggle of the Plains Indians during this turbulent time period. It is a rich text that presents a bright new perspective.