The Vengeance of Mothers

The second installment in a series that began with One Thousand White Women, this novel is presented as a collection of journal entries discovered in antique U.S. Cavalry saddlebags. In a modern-day prologue, JW Dodd III, editor of Chicago's Chitown Magazine, receives the saddlebags from Molly Standing Bear, a young Cheyenne woman. JW's late father had published the journals of his great-grandmother, May Dodd, who was committed to an asylum in 1875, escaped, and joined the Brides for Indians program, in which white women were sent west to marry Cheyenne warriors. May lived among the Cheyenne until her death during a U.S. Army attack on their winter village in March 1876. Inside the saddlebags, JW finds 13 ledger books: six by the Irish twin sisters Margaret (Meggie) and Susan (Susie) Kelly, and seven by Molly McGill. He arranges them in alternating chronological order.

The journals open days after the massacre. Meggie begins writing from the winter camp of the Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, where survivors have taken refuge after a brutal 10-day march across the mountains. The Kelly twins, who grew up as orphans on the streets of Chicago, were part of the original group of brides. They married twin Cheyenne boys and each gave birth to twin daughters, but all four infants froze to death during the march. May Dodd was killed in the attack, along with nearly all the other white women. The twins vow to kill and scalp as many soldiers as they can.

Brother Anthony, a Benedictine monk who survived the massacre, asks the twins to help seven captive white women in the village. These women were a second group of brides sent west before the program was terminated; Lakota warriors attacked their train and abducted the survivors. Molly McGill, a former schoolteacher from New York, emerges as the group's leader. She reveals she joined the program to gain parole from a life sentence at Sing Sing, where she was convicted of murder. The group includes Lady Ann Hall, a British suffragist whose lover, the ornithologist Helen Elizabeth Flight, was killed in the massacre; Lulu LaRue, a French actress escaping a brothel; Carolyn Metcalf, committed to an asylum by her husband; Maria Galvez, a Mexican girl fleeing a death sentence; Hannah Alford, Lady Hall's maidservant; and Astrid Norstegard, a Norwegian fisherwoman.

A legendary frontier figure named Dirty Gertie rides into the village, stunning everyone who believed she had been killed by Jules Seminole, a mixed-race Army scout. Gertie reveals it was Seminole who misdirected the cavalry to Little Wolf's village, causing the massacre. Because the Cheyenne and Lakota regard Gertie as a he'emnane'e, a person considered to possess the spiritual qualities of both sexes, she is permitted to speak in council with the chiefs, negotiating the women's release and the provision of horses. Gertie plans to escort the women home, but most refuse to return to their desperate former circumstances.

Molly meets privately with Hawk, the mixed-blood Cheyenne warrior who captured the women but spared their lives. She discovers he speaks English, learned during four years at a Jesuit Indian school before he escaped at age 12 and walked over a thousand miles back to his people. Hawk agrees to let the women join his party heading north to find Little Wolf's band, and they ride out in early April.

During the journey, the scouts capture Christian Goodman, a Mennonite chaplain who deserted after witnessing the massacre. Molly persuades Hawk to spare him. While retrieving Christian's Bible from a cave, Molly encounters Seminole, who captures them. When a hawk's shriek distracts Seminole, Molly kicks him and escapes with Christian, also rescuing a captive girl. When the twins clean greasepaint from the girl's face, they recognize Martha Atwood, the sole white woman thought to have been safely returned to Chicago after the massacre. Martha is severely traumatized and barely able to speak.

Hawk leads the party to the ruins of the destroyed village, where burial scaffolds hold the dead. Lady Hall retrieves the only surviving piece of Helen Flight's artwork from Helen's scaffold. Hawk conducts a three-day vision quest atop the scaffold of his dead wife, son, and mother. The party then reaches Little Wolf's new village in a secluded valley. The twins discover their friend Euphemia (Phemie) Washington, a formerly enslaved Black woman from the original brides group, alive. Martha is reunited with her infant son, and the sight begins to draw her from her dissociative state.

The newcomers settle into village life. Dog Woman, the village's matchmaker, pairs each woman with a prospective husband for a welcome feast. Molly develops a bond with Mouse, a six-year-old Cheyenne orphan. At the celebration, the women perform both a traditional courtship dance and a cancan. Having already told Hawk she wishes to be his wife, Molly watches as he arrives with three horses as a bride price and claims her. That night, believing him asleep, she whispers the story of her daughter Clara, beaten to death by Molly's drunken husband, and how she killed him in revenge. Hawk holds her silently through the night.

Gertie returns with grave news: Three Army columns totaling thousands of soldiers, including Custer's Seventh Cavalry, are converging to crush the remaining free tribes. The twins join the Strong-heart Women, a warrior society led by Phemie and Pretty Nose, an Arapaho woman who earned war chief status during the Mackenzie attack. Molly joins to protect her partner Pretty Nose but insists she will not kill soldiers. As the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Arapaho converge into an enormous encampment, Sitting Bull holds a Sun Dance, a sacred ceremony, in which he receives a vision of soldiers falling into his camp, interpreted as a prophecy of victory. Molly and Hawk consummate their marriage, and a medicine woman tells Hawk she has foreseen both Molly and their unborn son killed in battle. He begs Molly not to fight, but she feels bound by obligation.

On June 17, 1876, the Strong-heart Women ride into battle against General Crook's forces along Rosebud Creek. The twins charge an infantry line, killing soldiers and collecting scalps. Pretty Nose's horse is shot in an ambush, and when Molly dismounts to help, both are captured by Crow warriors. That night the twins confront the emptiness of their vengeance, admitting it brought no relief.

Seminole claims Molly, tormenting her and telling her Hawk was killed. Captain John Bourke, who was May Dodd's lover, discovers Molly in the Crow camp and takes her into Army custody. He matches her to her brides program dossier and orders her returned to Sing Sing. Gertie visits and agrees to safeguard Molly's final ledger book.

Pretty Nose escapes her captor and confirms Molly was taken by soldiers. The twins learn Hawk survived his wounds but is too weak to travel. Martha, having emerged from her traumatized state, joins Lady Hall in organizing a rescue party that rides south to overtake the Army wagon.

Lady Hall narrates the final events. The party finds Molly standing at the edge of a high cliff above the Powder River, preparing to jump rather than return to prison. Lady Hall pleads with her. Molly describes a recurring dream of leaping from a precipice and soaring like a bird. A hawk shrieks overhead. As Molly leans forward, two riders appear at full gallop: Pretty Nose and Phemie on her white stallion. Phemie sweeps along the cliff edge, and Molly grabs her arm, swinging onto the horse. The three women gallop away. Most onlookers believe Molly jumped to her death, but Lady Hall watches the three Strong-heart Women disappear into the distance, Molly smiling as she rides away, calling out that in her dream, she always flies.