At first I was iffy about this book. I really didn't like May Dodd very much and I didn't find her to be very realistic. It seemed like the male author tried really really hard to portray a woman and write as a woman would. I feel he failed. It didn't come off as authentic and he just had the female characters say and act the way he thinks women stereotypically do. The characters were also a little overly and unrealistically feminist for the era. I don't feel like their antics would have been received nicely by the "savages". I also found the "accents" given to the women of various cultural and ethnic backgrounds really annoying. So why did I give this book 4 stars? Because even though I found the portion of the book before the women married the "savages" to be really dull, I did really enjoy the story after they were living among the Cherokees. The end was heartbreaking and I ended up actually being sad to leave the characters.