"From a historian and senior writer and editor at Atlas Obscura, a fascinating account of the daring nineteenth-century women who moved to South Dakota to divorce their husbands and start living on their own terms"-- In the late nineteenth century, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, offered a tempting freedom often difficult to obtain elsewhere: divorce. With the laxest divorce laws in the country, five railroad lines, and the finest hotel for hundreds of miles, the small city became The Divorce Colony-- the unexpected headquarters for unhappy spouses, and the center of a heated national debate over the future of American marriage. White unveils the incredible social, political, and personal dramas that unfolded in Sioux Falls and reverberated around the country through the stories of four very different women: Maggie De Stuers, a descendant of the influential New York Astors whose divorce captivated the world; Mary Nevins Blaine, a daughter-in-law to a presidential hopeful with a vendetta against her meddling mother-in-law; Blanche Molineux, an aspiring actress escaping a husband she believed to be a murderer; and Flora Bigelow Dodge, a vivacious woman determined, against all odds, to obtain a "dignified" divorce. - adapted from jacket and Amazon info Provided by publisher.

Prologue: "Is marriage a failure?" -- Maggie. A thriving and interesting place ; In good faith ; Just another ; Budding hope and dead passions ; A savage American -- Mary. Ardor and inexperience ; The campaigns ; Undesirable cattle ; A personal statement ; Let not man put asunder -- Blanche. A moral superstition ; Free as air ; The sentence ; To be left alone -- Flora. Happiness will follow thee ; A tramp and an exile ; Stupid, unjust, monstrous and foolish ; Light in the sky ; Heart -- Epilogue: A rising of ideals.