Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Strongheart: The Lost Journals of May Dodd and Molly McGill
    Strongheart: The Lost Journals of May Dodd and Molly McGill
    Strongheart: The Lost Journals of May Dodd and Molly McGill
    Ebook448 pages6 hours

    Strongheart: The Lost Journals of May Dodd and Molly McGill

    By Jim Fergus

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Strongheart is the final installment to the One Thousand White Women trilogy, a novel about fierce women who are full of heart and the power to survive.

    In 1873, a Cheyenne chief offers President Grant the opportunity to exchange one thousand horses for one thousand white women, in order to marry them with his warriors and create a lasting peace. These women, "recruited" by force in the penitentiaries and asylums of the country, gradually integrate the way of life of the Cheyenne, at the time when the great massacres of the tribes begin.

    After the battle of Little Big Horn, some female survivors decide to take up arms against the United States, which has stolen from the Native Americans their lands, their way of life, their culture and their history. This ghost tribe of rebellious women will soon go underground to wage an implacable battle, which will continue from generation to generation.

    In this final volume of the One Thousand White Women trilogy, Jim Fergus mixes with rare mastery the struggle of women and Native Americans in the face of oppression, from the end of the 19th century until today. With a vivid sense of the 19th century American West, Fergus paints portraits of women as strong as they are unforgettable.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 6, 2021
    ISBN9781250200990
    Author

    Jim Fergus

    Jim Fergus is the author of One Thousand White Women, The Sporting Road, A Hunter’s Road and Wild Girl. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of national magazines and newspapers, including Newsweek, Newsday, The Paris Review, Esquire, Sports Afield, and Field & Stream. Fergus was born in Chicago and attended Colorado College. He worked as a teaching tennis professional before becoming a full-time freelance writer. He lives in southern Arizona.

    Related to Strongheart

    Titles in the series (1)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Western Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Lily King

      Apr 25, 2020

      Award-winning and bestselling author Lily King’s latest book, Writers & Lovers, is set in the Boston area during the 1990s. This cleverly written novel features a compelling protagonist, a struggling 31-year-old writer named Casey. Readers follow Cas

      2 min read

    • Article

      Shame Is Ever-Present When You’re Sitting in a Cell

      Oct 23, 2020

      Between a strained relationship with my family and the death of a good friend, I’ve struggled to feel like I’m worth something.

      5 min read

    • Article

      February’s BOOK CLUB

      Jan 5, 2023

      River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer (£18.99, HB, Headline) It’s Barbados 1834 and slavery has been abolished, but former slaves must work for another six years – for free! In an act of resistance, Rachel heads off through the Caribbean and South A

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Girl Who Fell Beneath The Sea

      Feb 23, 2022

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 336 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Axie Oh Publisher Hodder & Stoughton The Korean tradition of telling folk stories goes back thousands of years. One well-known story, “The Tale Of Shim Cheong”, centres on the sacrificial

      1 min read

    • Article

      My Life With A Monster

      Jul 16, 2021

      My Life With A Monster
      4 min read

    • Article

      Reconciling America’s Original Sin: The Millions Interviews Deanne Stillman

      Nov 7, 2017

      I think it’s kind of a universal situation—that sooner or later we often find ourselves accepted for being one thing, but in our hearts we’re something else. The post Reconciling America’s Original Sin: The Millions Interviews Deanne Stillman a

      8 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Bill Morris

      Dec 17, 2017

      It wasn’t planned, but 2017 turned out to be a year when my reading hopscotched happily between genres, styles, and voices. Here are half a dozen highlights, arranged by where you might find them shelved in your favorite bookshop. Memoir Joan Didion’

      4 min read

    • Article

      Letter From The Founder

      Feb 11, 2021

      Letter From The Founder
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Letter from New York

      Dec 10, 2019

      A Letter from New York
      10 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Nov 26, 2019

      Letters
      3 min read

    • Article

      The California Gaze

      Apr 1, 2023

      The California Gaze
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Bill Morris

      Dec 20, 2020

      This was the year I finally, belatedly, decided to figure out why people make such a fuss about Joy Williams. The post A Year in Reading: Bill Morris appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Memoirs Of A Fox

      Jan 1, 2019

      My year of graduate work in Cambridge, England was a somewhat bleak and desperate affair, coinciding with a bout of depression that could perhaps have been shortened or ameliorated if I had been assigned hard agricultural labor, a daily column of loc

      14 min read

    • Article

      Cowboy Archaeologist

      Nov 8, 2022

      Cowboy Archaeologist
      3 min read

    • Article

      Year in Reading: Michael Bourne

      Dec 19, 2020

      They should hand out a copy of The Half Has Never Been Told to every American kid finishing college and every newly elected member of Congress. The post Year in Reading: Michael Bourne appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Nobody’s More Country

      Sep 19, 2022

      Nobody’s More Country
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Strongheart

    3.5/5

    10 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Having read all three books in the “One Thousand White Women” series, I found this last one to be the weakest. I’m sure it would have been better reading for me if I had just recently read the first two in the series. As it was, I spent the first part of the novel trying to recall who was who and remember the sequence of events.As in the previous novels, Molly and May are the central characters and the story centers around the journals they kept during their time living as Indians. In this book, there was more of a supernatural element running through their lives.There were many goodbyes and reunions throughout the book and at times I felt it was a bit redundant. Also the characters each told stories of some of the same events, but really with nothing new added.I did like the details about the cultures of the different tribes and the games they played amongst each other—somewhat like the Native American Olympics. Near the end of the book, the topic of missing Native American women and children is discussed. The lack of attention given this is appalling, as were the numbers of those unaccounted for. I would love to see Jim Fergus write a story about Molly Standing Bear and her efforts to find these women and children and bring their abusers to justice.Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for allowing me to read an advance copy. I’m happy to give my honest review.
    • 4/5
      Strongheart is the final chapter of the western trilogy that Jim Fergus began in 1998 with One Thousand White Women. In that first novel, President Grant and Cheyenne Nation chief Little Wolf agreed on an exchange of one thousand white women for one thousand of the tribe’s best horses. But don’t be mislead by that one-horse-for-one-woman trade because the entire trilogy is a strong pro-feminism statement about the power of women to adapt to new challenges while at the same time influencing the dominant culture in positive ways. All three books are based upon diaries and journals kept by some of the most influential women who joined the tribe: May Dodd, who was released from a Chicago mental institution so that she could be part of the initial trade; Irish twins Meggie and Susie Kelly; and Mollie McGill, whose words are so large a part of Strongheart. As a result, the reader experiences life with the Cherokee through the eyes of some of the strongest women imaginable exactly as they experienced it on a daily basis. Contemporary characters in Strongheart include Molly Standing Bear, descendent of one of the diarists, and JW Dodd, son of the man who first published a portion of the diaries in a Chicago magazine called Chitown when JW was just a boy. Molly and JW shared a mutual crush as pre-teens, and because of that, Molly has decided now to share more of the historical diaries that have come into her possession so that JW, as the magazine’s current editor, can publish them as his father did before him. Strongheart picks up the story shortly after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, a battle that would prove to be the short-lived immediate victory that would ultimately doom forever the way of life the tribes so precariously held on to. By this point in the story, the women have successfully married into the tribe and have children of their own. Sadly, however, many of the mothers and their children have been killed even before the Little Bighorn fight by surprise attacks on their villages by American soldiers. Now, the tribes have broken into smaller groups all in search of a place to safely make it through the coming winter. Despite the odds against them, a group of white warrior women and the Cherokee women who trained them, is determined to take up the fight for survival alongside their men. Others in the tribe make a different decision for themselves and their children. This is their story.Bottom Line: The One Thousand White Women trilogy is about a group of courageous women who learn that they are more equal in the world created by “savages” than they ever will be in the “civilized” world from which they came - and some of them are not ready to give up that life even if they have to die to keep it. The story is rightly sympathetic to the plight of the women and their new families, but it shares that sympathy, too, with the often-bewildered boy soldiers who oppose them. Note, also, that there is much here that those interested in the sociology of America’s indigenous people during this tragic era are certain to appreciate. Review Copy provided by Publisher

    Book preview

    Strongheart - Jim Fergus

    Ujcbook_preview_excerpt.html}ͲFޫ`fᘉ`]ŌntEݨR(uIUuLI2u$HQG܋r6ڏo's2Wl$d0 z(Ww/W_'_5o*U}C8WOS4RMߜa/:W EmlM+׶vvE%\ w eC+_*+YòQ>%MOmLxt϶q[(;\П6籪,D$ +;>s)z,= uvФ {s;ͣ>FZ0c1S5I54tUp䬞Bۂq緻15^Z޵Qx>8]j Uj_ q[y~뒯NN(0. ?<ͅB? 5;%X'g4Q,::Y$+W:}#VOB{9x}'=emN$itqn:ЃxjB&cu xᙺֻpGr1^ufw t_Ts +QG'I8NYK^y! /YXY|6)p9;N8.Usw~Cr>;Y=TIUn%r8٩}Gce"ߔn/ُ,R &= #QSѝB)nb{FT9S] )F7m40ZPzV;?Ucu|> mmՄFI!Or(x9TxWvN 鹕Õ*w|MY >T2IW#:f,QMOz+,y[ɯI6|:*E K'z`AYmE݋";Ϣ !(vX}hQHu4OU ;$)'Lק Q\uRqGP!хF8aĎ3ug7KĎP8W6&_ծșHȳ 8(Y͓١`׊iʴ\7+f[N#v/s?n:R A{!uO}3]x˃4 ,4}օ؊8lZ5o[q|M,swFrJLj(b mᏩpH?:UE{SE߹NoulSCrôz6OBT$D0^nXsѰ+Qژz*,YdĄl Mj?@ۨyNWxj;Yi06rtm D(-M,}_Ν6%F`6>,LXf/wԄV't@E y_[E_~+9'[:OF(xCkC:L١} 3xMDúd7_<6E?i"(9Yq坘jL+NBKu5@&W@"Wrb!Mqu$s0&_|fi'W!z7D>?\x0/Z!&"l^l dka1r0O 6gwKI`"".2Xv)#;"wp<9IbZN00zLuF Ο)TDb)\a>{vSe"zhFXOqӥL½<]YH#;|n?gwVHp>"]LΡ&ONc 1TXZb YO`eDѻ=lվ N24<_ f$F|-GƢy a(K#gaUIxD^=쨞]K#7 7+'lufuOW!M=ITO;^d7HDt2YFR<Hl(ay嫏 mh»I {pAӧ; L7:btݽywGC> R(7@iRf' u$8{gCdh/v-o,>Ep\aA%OFh\ j D‡)Ak؀rhˆl}lw"J#8D፮fn񽃺bP]'O0b&1` IcuCa(_@SgzHDj 8 _."nϴHŸ:r~=p,_}FבPvpdk!e8&'ق_Bwa"`# r "89+Rr NBP;{p+2Kh[XTf lߤ J kxNY="ə|xUlMS=/mlA0VI@|%P/vGEjnDa+(EbD&(hИ:Ohg䅦P M'e5x8ЮU*w¦tN8鮔,HQװDqw e %("0|Qz= ihƝ<$sODgih;^~kC2D=GDC6 gno`OIYQ2l 06$m_wrzD0/> QHdd/.FdTuGyC`95q/9rۯ_ $a> g @qƾX\7Z0|0.65u5}2f˘`;QˢT iY!/?`K4Gy[qt U 4ֆ/`yfux 3*3x\vS޹EK 9XGR5@݉\(e Z ]dF5bĮ A+`>^M<,:$KW.H7zatlMEeZ 2hm)9`MVˢ |zEOXؖP8d :l8)fj Bߗ =8 r}s6H M''@k eeŝ>6ݥLh]hݍy3  OV!qh..CVQLj[_m I4drReUۏ64S҄6>RniR4{ce9S/,abS'3_, >Hddx֌=q8_$Ce'yE}r/pk*h= "BMeY_5.yP"OȔ7@q̪<\й0_Qm],e 5׺24`WkxWn#X/1J+ D06*m`-R0<ܕ[4FtH_[F:G&ع{|Z烨Q/g$ZxX@RMrI6 =nkz?^y.iE1owWu\-?n'u(Zc>mNV_x/FdeQͱ䴊LoK=eBm%GJ_YkL)Vg;-%.km2] D]9Kg?w8;Fo\_qЙg-v`4}2.T3Fl|_=V*%V|V TM~! {6gܳ TJZל0^@N䳤 gLm+p |3䇈wJg5ۊNh4=C@uTb \%3ŗ @hab_;Һ]8uk-ʭD43oL`j[ٖHFdZv%CN*:TD'ak*_/|D}J ̭y}Vsܶu bz9*u)jz9w:0ƒgߌ70B6XP yw"ی^Qn2d]t\ ?h}ު>j#Ɛ;'<l9 tkV )QW~]8qNL/7"3UPA39u h?V_e1XH<H;+tU%̻ XZ@9mNڌTu u+H-rE˰w%E%N`<k??%A4jz=J.Y^]7EktYnǂ< 9>> j̞+̄g)uq`o>ɣ*V!%oo As?cfF+yJs#rsrtj-ZZ@̓9ڏʓ Xh|l2eFª^hQs ,(• =eۢaIsY:ʭCt|;VC.Jޗ>?>~4jE;fq,Q:lhLwsV*\FgJ!jDeJɽg )X0Iiv;>,~/ύ8|a p;Ү>k} @Y_r֬k_U.'ˢ ML~l/łb<^xTiV\uonKń& &|,keu泵OBEIʢ|7DR-[st7(okc`Έ::Y.eᩂ]Y),2Oq*] k|[)Ѫrp).9Wnwr F#]dv"GMckR a仦b@̺ Ӈ_1)WLZ T.0mE)%J@LsF;Dp"ӆoHr=Σ| sE8D}zAz٨7yS`֮FD㛾Ok-Vgk}3z&wc\ %qma80^m!{\4.%`w+\9yM(/;{qXQ~zP4\\Nz#[RU$"13ua< 2 B`m__&sٹr@qgc+/IsMUwyV쳾SZ&pdɘ[-R8F.fY&Xオ"Ngȡ:V%JaBD:l e?i&h]M}ӊJTVsz.dY@nAJb2skj3lћ$ y$Ӟ3ѩsXv[grw5-IL0Of-m3"1Iq̧ABubG;TVƙ+RSƁ - zSQ`wXm/\A^’qb0r2kŽW:4l&0Ou㴚*.էw'l_XNjUC'q3.2#t_欴O8m2'>)l~3ӿt8 : [lV CC4gIH[ePM- 1-K_1P>VzZt2PSxe]=BP3Ԯh6bư*[meXu~%6t])o-e=(Usisvx=WV8)VlDI`斯:G@96cv&?˯4kŠad/oD<;ghwy7Lr9ʇl=Z6`'}j@o0vv2Gh=0Y?]5m)/eXHgz}!Cuk&j,W6~Vh)ˎ8Jeb\߻#c]_L /:աLxy児% *qi@Zth KtBn(eM/.0OxT~֞C/Aˎ 3q5ؾJRͨlf5m,Y= $3453g=&k=E3,!KUꭗ'OlAZFjZH'H^$En֑aaz`b+"6k13aESuk2YS 3+&uSRj5,T&EdVo?:+ fG01_=^ꬄE (ׯZb:[Ej5.#!+En)<.y."v.{+,cfzZ5VsF)ƆtDHi7rIh5z8Z u4 _Ϥ"߬}p$ѩ=kpؖ=-\ kB;$w"ܩΦ?qVG#2 ^kySXJ@p!@is7\hU/澀9c'YN]OujcKxfnMCYƂz
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1