"[Narrator Laura Hicks] captures the compelling emotions of these desperate women as they escape their former lives of hardship and dare to dream of a freedom they haven't yet known." — Booklist, starred review 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. Praise for Laura Hicks: "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.
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The best writing transports readers to another time and place, so that when they reluctantly close the book, they are astonished to find themselves returned to their everyday lives. One Thousand White Women is such a book. Jim Fergus so skillfully envelops us in the heart and mind of his main character, May Dodd, that we weep when she mourns, we shake our fist at anyone who tries to sway her course, and our hearts pound when she is in danger.
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Colorado Springs Gazette