One Thousand White Women The Journals of May Dodd

In 1875, May Dodd travels west across America to become the wife of a Cheyenne chief. Her family, wealthy and well connected, had her committed to an insane asylum because she loved a man of lower social standing. The only way out is a secret government program that sends women from "civilized" society to marry Cheyenne warriors.

The story is told through May's fictional diaries, though it rests on an actual historical event. Her entries follow the trip into territory she knows nothing about and the new life waiting at the end of it.

Once among the Cheyenne, May marries the chief Little Wolf. Earlier, she has a brief and passionate romance with a young army captain, John Bourke. She ends up pulled between the two men and between two lives that have nothing in common.

The book is historical fiction in the form of a journal, narrated in May's own voice. It mixes adventure and romance with the question of what freedom costs a woman who has been shut away for her choices.