Audiobooks by Jim Fergus

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the US government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial Brides for Indians program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man’s world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime. Author Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time. “An impressive historical, terse, convincing, and affecting.”--Kirkus Reviews

Jim Fergus (Author), Erik Steele, Laura Hicks (Narrator)

Audiobook

Strongheart: The Lost Journals of May Dodd and Molly McGill

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. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Griffin

Jim Fergus (Author), Erik Steele, Laura Hicks (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Vengeance of Mothers

"Laura Hicks renders this imaginative work splendidly. She is vivacious and expressive as May Dodd...Her vocal characterizations, especially of the various immigrant women Dodd encounters, are lively. A work this unusual needs a performance that is versatile and out of the ordinary, both of which have been achieved." -- AudioFile on One Thousand White Woman. The stunning sequel to Jim Fergus' award-winning One Thousand White Women. 9 March 1876 My name is Meggie Kelly and I take up this pencil with my twin sister, Susie. We have nothing left, less than nothing. The village of our People has been destroyed, all our possessions burned, our friends butchered by the soldiers, our baby daughters gone, frozen to death on an ungodly trek across these rocky mountains. Empty of human feeling, half-dead ourselves, all that remains of us intact are hearts turned to stone. We curse the U.S. government, we curse the Army, we curse the savagery of mankind, white and Indian alike. We curse God in his heaven. Do not underestimate the power of a mother's vengeance... So begins the journal of Margaret Kelly, a woman who participated in the government's "Brides for Indians" program in 1873, a program whose conceit was that the way to peace between the United States and the Cheyenne Nation was for One Thousand White Women to be given as brides in exchange for three hundred horses. These "brides" were mostly fallen women; women in prison, prostitutes, the occasional adventurer, or those incarcerated in asylums. No one expected this program to work. The brides themselves thought it was simply a chance at freedom. But many of them fell in love with the Cheyenne's spouses and had children with them...and became Cheyenne themselves. The Vengeance of Mothers is an audiobook that explores what happens to the bonds between wives and husbands, children and mothers, when society sees them as "unspeakable." What does it mean to be white, to be Cheyenne, and how far will these women go to avenge the ones they love? As he did in One Thousand White Women, Jim Fergus brings to light a time and place in American history, and fills it with unforgettable characters who live and breathe with a passion we can relate to even today.

Jim Fergus (Author), Erik Steele, Laura Hicks (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Wild Girl

When Ned Giles is orphaned as a teenager, he heads West hoping to leave his troubles behind by joining the 1932 Great Apache Expedition on their search for the young son of a wealthy Mexican landowner who was kidnapped by wild Apaches. But the expedition's goal becomes compromised when they encounter a wild Apache girl in a Mexican jail cell, victim of a Mexican massacre of her tribe that has left her orphaned and unwilling to eat or speak. Ned's growing feelings for the troubled girl soon force him to choose allegiances and make a decision that will haunt him forever. Based on historical fact, Jim Fergus takes readers on a journey of magnificent sweep and heartbreaking consequence. "There's plenty of laughs, anger, sorrow, and rage to keep the story moving along at a breezy pace; and all the subplots involving the multigenerational characters and their kooky suburban antics are tied up nicely."--Booklist

Jim Fergus (Author), Chris Baskous (Narrator)

Audiobook