2006 #1 READ:

No doubt about it for me at all. Claiming honours for the top spot in my heart for 2006 (drum roll, please) ... "One Thousand White Women" by Jim Fergus.

Every once in a very long while, I am privileged to read a novel that is so compelling, so breathtaking and so utterly absorbing that I find myself holding my breath in awe as I turn the final page. "One Thousand White Women" is one of those novels!

In 1854 at a peace conference held at Fort Laramie, a prominent Cheyenne chief had the temerity (or so the white US Army negotiators thought) to request the gift of one thousand white women as brides for his warriors. Coming from the perspective of a man in a matrilineal society in which all children born belong to their mother's tribe, it seemed to be the perfect solution to the integration of white and native people, society and culture. In fact, white society of the day was appalled at the suggestion and the peace talks collapsed. This novel explores, in fiction, how events might have unfolded had the government acceded to the request and what the lives of the volunteer white brides might have been like in an aboriginal Cheyenne society that knew they were facing possible genocidal extinction in an unwelcoming modern world!

Fergus has done a positively masterful job crafting a fast-paced novel that could be read purely on the surface as a wonderful period piece in the 19th century American West! You'll find it all here - romance, knee-slapping humour, outrageous stereotypes, credible dialogue, a magnificent cast of wildly disparate characters, pathos, sex, violence, guns, battles, bravery and derring-do, political bafflegab and adventure!

But even a moment's pause will furrow more thinking readers' foreheads as they question their stance on a wide array of socially and politically charged issues that persist even to this day - racially mixed marriages; men's roles vs women's roles in both modern and nomadic hunter-gatherer societies; homosexuality; charges of pedophilia in Catholic and Christian ministry; the efficacy (or even validity) of overly zealous Christian missionaries in pagan societies; the current status of aboriginals in modern society; the perennial flouting of treaties between white and aboriginal society negotiated in good faith; the demise of aboriginal language; the forced placement of aboriginal people into reservations, white settlements and parochial schools; and so very many more.

"Must read" is a term far too loosely bandied about in this era of marketing of blockbuster best sellers but I put it to those who enjoy historical fiction that "One Thousand White Women" easily earns it! (I'm willing to lay odds that more than one reader will find themselves teary-eyed at the close of this novel).