Chief Little Wolf travels to Washington DC and proposes exchanging one thousand horses for one thousand white women as brides.

The US government secretly creates the Brides for Indians program, recruiting women from prisons and mental asylums.

May Dodd escapes the Lake Forest Lunatic Asylum by forging her father's consent signature with Martha Atwood's help.

The women board a train heading west and witness soldiers and passengers slaughtering herds of buffalo from the windows.

May meets her military escort Captain John Bourke at Fort Laramie, and the two bond over a shared love of Shakespeare.

May and Captain Bourke spend an intimate night together before the women leave Fort Laramie to join the Cheyenne.

Chief Little Wolf selects May as his bride, and the group of women is formally exchanged for horses.

A mass wedding ceremony blends Episcopalian Christian rites with Cheyenne customs, and the grooms openly mock the vow of monogamy.

Gertie arrives at the Cheyenne camp with a warning from Captain Bourke that the government is abandoning the BFI program.

A Crow war party abducts May and several other women, including Pretty Walker, while they are bathing at a river.

Sara Johnstone kills her Crow attacker with his own knife while resisting rape but is killed in the struggle.

Chief Little Wolf leads a Cheyenne war party in an attack on the Crow camp, rescuing the captive women.

May reunites with Captain Bourke at Fort Laramie, where he reveals the Army's plan to force all tribes onto reservations.

During recovery from pneumonia, May gives premature birth to a white baby girl she privately knows is Captain Bourke's child.

US troops attack the Cheyenne village at dawn; May is shot in the back and dies writing her final journal entry.

The novel opens with Chief Little Wolf's radical peace proposal in Washington, which leads the US government to secretly create the Brides for Indians program. May Dodd escapes her unjust asylum confinement by forging her father's signature and boards a train west with a group of other outcast women. At Fort Laramie she forms a powerful bond with Captain John Bourke, spending a last intimate night with him before Little Wolf chooses her as his bride and the exchange of women for horses is completed. After living in the Cheyenne village and surviving a violent Crow abduction in which Sara Johnstone is killed, May receives a painful warning from Bourke about the Army's plans and gives birth to a white baby she knows is his child. The novel ends in catastrophe when US troops attack the peaceful village at dawn, and May dies from a gunshot wound while writing her final words in her journal.

The headline story of May Dodd's journey from asylum to Cheyenne bride to violent end.

May's wealthy father has her committed to a lunatic asylum after she bears two children out of wedlock with Harry Ames.

The women arrive at Fort Sidney and are treated with contempt by army wives; Phemie Washington lifts morale by leading a spiritual.

May discovers that the wagon train's rough-spoken teamster Jimmy is actually a woman named Gertie living in disguise.

Reverend Hare, a corpulent Episcopalian missionary, arrives at Camp Robinson to accompany the women into Cheyenne territory as interpreter.

May moves into Little Wolf's tipi and meets his hostile senior wife Quiet One and friendly second wife Feather on Head.

Jules Seminole introduces whiskey into the peaceful Cheyenne camp, triggering a night of widespread drunken violence.

May is attacked by Jules Seminole during the drunken chaos but is saved by the elderly crone Crooked Nose.

When Gertie offers May an escape route back to white society, May refuses and chooses to remain with the other women.

Reverend Hare is discovered molesting a Cheyenne boy, then beaten by the tribe and permanently exiled from the camp.

The Kelly twins use their street cunning to negotiate more favorable trading terms for the Cheyenne at Fort Laramie.

A Cheyenne holy woman prophesies disaster for the tribe, and Little Wolf's subsequent vision quest fails to provide any guidance.

Quiet One bakes bread laced with arsenic that poisons several people in the camp, and Little Wolf bans the substance.

May and Gretchen build a women's sweat lodge, claiming a traditionally male spiritual space for communal female healing.

A Cheyenne war party returns to camp carrying the severed right hands of twelve Shoshone infants, shocking all the white women.

Abbot Anthony receives May's original leather-bound journals from her grandson Harold Wild Plums at a Montana abbey.

Before joining the BFI program, May's wealthy father had her committed to a lunatic asylum for defying class and sexual norms by bearing two children with a working-class man. The journey west introduces a cast of outcast women whose lives are upended at every turn: May discovers the teamster is a woman in disguise, meets Little Wolf's hostile senior wives, and watches the corrupt missionary Reverend Hare ultimately disgraced for molesting a Cheyenne boy. Violence erupts when Jules Seminole brings whiskey into camp, and though May chooses to stay rather than escape, darker troubles accumulate — Quiet One poisons the camp with arsenic, and a war party returns with severed infant hands. The Kelly twins' street cunning, a holy woman's dire prophecy, and the women's construction of their own sweat lodge illustrate how each character forges a unique path of survival and resistance. The pool closes with Abbot Anthony receiving May's journals from her grandson, completing the record she could not finish.

The supporting cast and secondary struggles that shaped life inside the Brides program.

Little Wolf's proposal to exchange horses for white women brides shocks the American delegation, who expel the Cheyenne immediately.

May endures sexualized medical abuse at the asylum, subjected to scalding water injections intended to cure her of supposed promiscuity.

Captain Bourke privately condemns the Brides for Indians program as utter madness, revealing his deep moral conflict to May.

May earns the Cheyenne name Mesoke, meaning Swallow, by impressing onlookers with a graceful dive during a group swim.

Phemie Washington refuses to perform traditional women's work in the Cheyenne camp and insists on hunting alongside the men.

Gretchen Fathauer publicly defeats Jules Seminole in an arm-wrestling match, asserting physical equality before the assembled Cheyenne camp.

During their honeymoon journey, May initiates intimacy with Little Wolf, reclaiming her sexuality entirely on her own terms.

Daisy Lovelace is gang-raped during the drunken camp chaos and is rescued by May, Phemie, Gretchen, and Gertie.

Phemie fights alongside Cheyenne warriors during the rescue raid on the Crow camp, earning unprecedented recognition as a warrior.

Little Wolf meets with General Crook at Fort Laramie but firmly rejects reservation life despite the implied military threat.

Army officers attempt to humiliate Cheyenne medicine men with an electrical battery, but Captain Bourke intervenes to let Little Wolf prevail.

May becomes lost in a Christmas blizzard and is rescued by the boy Horse Boy before developing severe pneumonia.

Little Wolf accepts the clearly white newborn as his own child, and the Cheyenne tribe proclaims the baby a divine savior.

Captain Bourke personally shoots and kills the unarmed boy Horse Boy during the army's dawn assault on the village.

May's great-grandson J. Will Dodd travels to the Tongue River Reservation and receives her leather-bound journals from Harold Wild Plums.

The novel's key turning points begin with Little Wolf's expelled peace proposal and the asylum's brutal medical abuse that drove May to escape, establishing from the outset that civilization is built on cruelty. At Fort Laramie, Bourke's private condemnation of the program as utter madness reveals the moral contradiction at the heart of American policy, while May's graceful dive earns her a Cheyenne name and first real sense of belonging. Phemie's refusal of women's work, Gretchen's defeat of Seminole, and May's decision to initiate intimacy with Little Wolf all represent acts of self-determination in the face of patriarchal control. The rescue from Crow captivity marks Phemie's elevation to warrior status, while at Fort Laramie Little Wolf's defiant rejection of reservation life signals the coming confrontation. The pool concludes with the most devastating reversals: the tribe's sanctification of Wren as a divine savior, Bourke's killing of the boy who saved May's life, and the final recovery of May's journals by her great-grandson, restoring her voice to history.