Vengeance of Mothers (Fergus)

The Vengeance of Mothers  (One Thousand White Women Series, 2)
Jim Fergus, 2017
St. Martin's Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250093424


Summary
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 U.S. 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 Woman 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. And the brides themselves thought of it simply as a chance at freedom. But many of them fell in love with their Cheyenne spouses and had children with them … and became Cheyenne themselves.

The Vengeance of Mothers 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?

With vivid detail and keen emotional depth, 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. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1950
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—Colorado College
• Awards—Mountains & Plains Booksellers Assn. - Fiction of the Year Award
• Currently—divides his time between Arizona, Colorado, and France


Jim Fergus is an American born author, best know for his 1998 novel Ten Thousand White Woman. Fergus was born in Chicago; his mother was French mother and father American. He attended high school in Massachusetts and headed out West to study English at Colorado College.

After working as a tennis pro for 10 years, he moved to Rand, Colorado, in 1980, settling among its 13 residents and writing freelance full time. Over the years, he published 100s of articles, essays, and interviews for various national publications.

Books
A devoted traveler, Fergus published his first book, a travel/sporting memoir titled, A Hunter's Road, in 1992. The LA Times called it "an absorbing, provocative, and even enchanting book."

Fergus’s first novel, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd came out in 1998. The novel won the 1999 Fiction of the Year Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association and has since sold over a million copies in the U.S. and France.

In 1999, Fergus published The Sporting Road, a collection of outdoor articles and essays. That book was followed in 2005 with his second novel, The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles, historical fiction set in the 1930’s in Chicago, Arizona, and the Sierra Madre of Mexico.

Marie-Blanche, which he published in France in 2011, is historical fiction based on his own family — the complex and ultimately fatal relationship between Fergus’s French mother and grandmother.

In 2013, Fergus published another novel, first in France as Chrysis: Portrait de l’Amour, later the same year in the U.S. as The Memory of Love. Set in the 1920s, the novel is a love story based on the life of a true-life female painter, Chrysis Jungbluth.

Fergus published a follow-up in 2017 to his well known One Thousand White Women. The sequel, The Mothers of Vengeance, follows white women, married to Cheyennes under the "Brides for Indians" program, who seek vengeance after their husbands and children were killed during a raid by U.S. troops.
                                               
Jim Fergus divides his time between southern Arizona, northern Colorado, and France, (Adapted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Although historically accurate, the book’s reliance on the journal form leads to long monologues that read as wooden and redundant. However, the book starts quickly, bringing readers immediately into the time and place, and fans looking for adventure.
Publishers Weekly


Readers sensitive to racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes will find no enjoyment here, as the author ignores the more interesting stories of the Cheyenne and Lakota women who appear on the margins. However, fans of the TV show Hell on Wheels might find the novel of interest. —Emily Hamstra, Seattle
Library Journal


(Starred review.) It's is a gripping tale, a history lesson infused with both sadness at the violence perpetuated against the Cheyenne and awe at the endurance of this remarkable group of women.
Booklist

Discussion Questions
1. Like the story of May Dodd, this book is told through journal entries written by white women living among the Cheyenne and "discovered" by one of May's descendants. How did this structure affect your reading experience? Did the firsthand accounts make the women's experiences seem more relatable?Would you believe that these journals had been rediscovered and published?

2. What do you think about Gertie's allegiances? She has had some terrible experiences with the United States Army, and yet she continues to work for them, but the women still see her as trustworthy. Do you agree?

3. Were you surprised by the sudden return of Martha, and by the catatonic state she was in? What do you think helped her to begin recovering, and what do you predict her future might be like?

4. On page 62, Molly writes, "We are the innocents they once were, escaping dark pasts into uncertain futures, and in denying us that change, they would be turning their back on their own experience, denying themselves and their friends." Would the Kelly sisters be betraying their own experiences by sending the other women back? Did they make the correct choice not to?

5. Throughout the story, Christian Goodman frequently cites his religious upbringing and moral opposition to war as reasons why he will not fight, either for the US Army or the Cheyenne. Contrast his views with those of the Kelly sisters. Are any of them right or wrong? What about each of their lives leads them to hold these opinions?

6. Throughout the book, many of the women are determined to get vengeance for their murdered families and friends. Analyze the Kelly sisters’ reaction to actually getting that vengeance by killing young soldiers. Does this satisfy them, and do you think they will continue in their quest for revenge?

7. Compare and contrast the experiences of the first group of women with those of the "greenhorns.” Do you think that the second group of women sent to be brides had an advantage over the first because there were other white women to help them assimilate to Cheyenne culture? Why or why not?

8. Phemie names her band of women warriors the Strong-heart Society. What do you think is the significance of choosing that name?

9. Near the end of the book, Meggie says that women go through three stages of life: before they have children, motherhood, and after their child has died. What do you make of Molly’s suggestion that there might be a fourth stage, a new chance at life? Do you think she will achieve that fourth stage?

10. How do you interpret the closing scene of the novel?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

top of page (summary)