The Divorce Colony: How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier

Atlas Obscura editor White (Lemonade with Zest) delivers a colorful history of divorce in America focused on women who came to Sioux Falls, S.Dak., to end their marriages. Requiring only a three-month stay to establish residency, Sioux Falls was the epicenter of the controversy over “migratory divorce” and the “rampant immorality” it was presumed to foster. Noting that two out of every three divorce seekers were women, White profiles Maggie De Stuers, a descendant of John Jacob Astor who came to Sioux Falls to divorce her Dutch diplomat husband; Mary Nevins Blaine, whose father-in-law, Republican congressman and presidential candidate James Blaine, tried to invalidate her marriage in its first week; Blanche Molineux, an aspiring actor convinced her husband was a murderer; and socialite Flora Bigelow Dodge, whose short stories and plays “pok[ed] fun at the petty grievances, outdated mores, and gossip-fueled misunderstandings of the world she moved in.” Opposition voices included Episcopal bishop William Hobart Hare, who claimed that the presence of divorce seekers in Sioux Falls gave him “moral nausea.” White’s vivid character sketches and fluid storytelling buttress her argument that by seeking divorce, these women helped to democratize marriage. Women’s history buffs will savor this sparkling account. Agent: Andrea Blatt, WME. (June)