April White’s The Divorce Colony is set during the Gilded Age, in the America of the late 1800s. It revolves around the lax divorce rules then to be found in South Dakota.

Today, getting divorced is almost easier than getting married. But in the Gilded Age, divorces were not so easy to obtain. Divorce was viewed as a moral concern for the state, and was denounced from the pulpit for threatening the sanctity of marriage. Even President Theodore Roosevelt spoke out against it.

Laws around divorce tended to be most lax on the frontiers of the United States. By the 1880s the territory of Dakota gained the dubious honor of posting the largest rise in divorces in the country. At the turn of the century one city - Sioux Falls, South Dakota - gained a reputation for having the laxest divorce laws of all, and required only a three month residency in order to take advantage of them. Those who came to Sioux Falls (mostly women) seeking to escape their marriages became known as the Divorce Colony.

White takes us through the stories of four well-known women of the day in their journey seeking divorce in Sioux Falls. Because of their high social status, and their wealth (or the wealth of the family they had married into), their stories were closely followed by the press of the day. Because of that, these women stand in for us for the hundreds of other “colonists” whose stories are no longer easily uncovered.

In White’s hands the stories of these four women - Maggie, Mary, Blanche and Flora, along with that of the good Reverend Dr. Hare - come together in Sioux Falls to give us a history on the attitudes toward divorce and how they have changed.

This is a really well done narrative nonfiction. White resurrects a forgotten history as she tells the stories of the four women, and how they came to be seeking divorce. She also has uncovered and discusses their connections to one another and to other “colonists”, some of whom get shorter stories of their own in the book.

Of the four stories, I felt those of Maggie and Blanche worked best, Mary's less so, while Flora’s story seemed in comparison to be less detailed and less interesting.

This is a great summer read, as it’s a book you can easily pick up and read in sections and then come back to later without losing the thread.

RATING: Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

NOTE: I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and Hachette Books. I am voluntarily providing this review. The book will be available to the public on June 14, 2022.

The Divorce Colony details the accounts of four, well off, women seeking a divorce from their husbands in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The book not only covers the hoops the women had to jump through but also the (sometimes bittersweet) aftermath of being granted a divorce. Overall, I enjoyed the book but there were a few spots that lagged a bit.
Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Books for the ARC.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It was an easy and informative book. It had a lot of details and was interesting.

I love this nonfiction book - a fantastic read about American women finding ways to exercise agency over their own lives in Sioux Falls, of all places. This is a piece of American history that I knew nothing about, and I find it fascinating, enlightening, and decidedly feminist. It reads like a dramatic novel, so if you are wanting to dip your toe into the world of nonfiction, give this one a try. Highly recommend!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC to read and review. All opinions are my own.

THE DIVORCE COLONY
BY: APRIL WHITE

This was an eye opening account of divorce that centers around four White well to do women who traveled to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to obtain a divorce from their husbands. This was in the end of the 1800's and most women would travel by train and stay in a very fancy hotel called the Cataract House to stay the minimum of time required to establish residency. It was the place to go during that era that required the shortest amount of time of establishing an address that was most often temporary until divorce was granted. In most cases once the divorce was obtained, the person would immediately leave Sioux Falls and move back to where they lived. This book chronicles four women of means and describes their situations. Not everybody had the money that it took to travel to South Dakota to bypass the stricter laws in their home States to terminate their marriages. This fact I found surprising because of the fewer privileges allowed women during this time period than White men is that two out of three to seek a divorce were women.

The full time residents of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, didn't like the idea that their hotel hosted all of the temporary folks using their town to basically be a revolving door of temporary residents staying only to leave once their divorces were granted.

This book examines closely the religious and political opinions of these "migratory divorces," that at one point reached President Theodore Roosevelt.

I found this narrative to be very enlightening about a historical record that is meticulously researched. It is basically divided up into four parts telling about each of the four women interspersed with factual data about many other cases. This was at times overwhelming with information but also accessible in the way this non-fiction book divided the four parts about four women who sought divorces during the late 1800's into the first decade of the 1900's. Part One discusses an Astor descendant. Her name was Maggie De Stuers whose lineage was from the rich Astor family from New York. Part Two focuses on Mary Nevins Blaine the daughter-in-law of a political family whose Father-in-law had aspirations of running for President. Part Three was about Blanche Molineux, a woman who thought her husband a murderer. Part Four was about Flora Bigelow a Socialite who almost stayed on to make her home in Sioux Falls, which stood out to me because everyone else didn't that I read about. I had never heard of any of these divorcees before reading this. I imagine everybody will recognize the Astor family.
This is a book that was fascinating and almost reads like fiction. It is very dense with details and one that I highly recommend to everyone who is interested in the history of marriage and divorce during the Gilded age and the reverberations of that topic and how it relates to the present.

None of the main four women discussed in this book wanted the attention or infamy that they received. The newspapers seemed to be very interested in reporting about the four women that make up the four parts of this book. They received the undesired attention both within the U.S. and abroad with the attention that celebrities garner because they were thrust center stage by the men who opposed them and the religious, political, legal, and social obstacles they faced. Maggie for the most part avoided the press, but relented and finally spoke her truth after her husband disparaged her first.

I found this book to be different from what I had initially expected it to be. It surprised me that such a scholarly written book would also be as interesting and highly original as it is. There is such a broad scope of information and people associated as well as different States case law to be included in a review of April White's master's thesis which is inclusive of the divorce colony's full history. Prior to her master's thesis she published an article about Maggie De Stuers's story in the Atavist magazine. Perhaps Maggie's story stands out to be more well known because of her being a member of the Astor family and its fame for wealth and because the Astor's were among the "four hundred". This book succeeds in having a scholarly basis and origin and guarantees to be intriguing and also is not light reading as its subject might suggest. It is comprehensive and well written citing an impressive amount of primary sources.

Publication Date: 6/14/2022

Thank you to Net Galley, April White and Hachette Books for generously providing me with my ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

#TheDivorceColony #AprilWhite #HachetteBooks #NetGalley

Originally Posted on Library Journal -

White follows four women (including an Astor and an aspiring actress) as they traveled to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in the late 19th century, all seeking the same thing: a divorce from their husbands. Sioux Falls attracted divorce-seekers from across the country—wealthy women in particular—with its five rail lines, its luxury hotel (rare on the frontier), and the most accommodating divorce laws in the U.S. The many Sioux Falls divorcées, nicknamed “the Divorce Colony” in the press, were at the center of a national debate about divorce and the state of American family. The dramatic lives of this book’s East Coast–socialite subjects will captivate White’s readers the way it captivated the American public a century ago. Just as fascinating, White expertly weaves in the politics of divorce (from churches to the courts to the White House) and does justice to the Divorce Colony women who she says started a revolution simply by seeking divorce.

VERDICT A spellbinding look into a forgotten history, with engaging storytelling that makes it feel like a dramatic novel instead of the well-researched nonfiction it is. A must for anyone interested in women’s history.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy. I really wanted to like this book and share it with my students. The story is not concise and there is too many details. It’s a very fascinating historical story that gets bogged down with descriptions of minor players.

I found the premise of this book extremely interesting but the execution a little muddled! The introduction and first couple chapters that gave a background of why the Divorce Colony became a place was fascinating and I couldn't put the book down. Then about 20% into the book, the author started bringing other stories into the mix and it became very confusing trying to keep track of who was who. I loved learning about divorce's place in American history as its something that so many women and people take for granted and do not recognize the people who helped legalize divorce as an acceptable practice in the US.

This was an interesting book and while I probably wouldn't have picked it up at a bookstore, I'm glad I read it.

I enjoyed how April White used story narrative to share the divorce stories of women and wove in pertinent information about the families, towns, laws, gossip, etc.

If you enjoy history and learning new things, this is a book you may enjoy.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Before reading this book, I had no idea that such a thing as the South Dakota "Divorce Colony" existed. The title intrigued me and I ended up learning a lot about marriage and divorce laws in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This book tells the stories of several women and their time spent in the Colony, usually citing primary sources such as diaries, correspondence, and legal documentation.

Th0ugh this was an interesting book filled with lots of fascinating information on an issue so important to women's lives, I did wish that the thesis of the book was woven into each story better and reinforced with a longer epilogue or final chapter.

This was absolutely fascinating look at divorce in America.Inloved reading about these strong women who took divorce into their own hands moved toSouth Dakota where ther was a short residency before you could legally file for divorce.The author writes in an engaging style made these women come alive.Sowell written informative and engaging read. I will be recommending.#netgalley #divorcecolony

Had NO IDEA. This was so revolutionary and honestly read like I was reading a novel!!! LOVED this and can't wait to recommend it.

Absolutely wonderful dive into divorce and marriage in the US through the lens of a “divorce colony” in South Dakota. I appreciated how this book was laid out, following five women and their stories to give us an overall picture of divorce at the time. I’m a big fan of Atlas Obscura, and any other history buff that enjoys finding quirky stories will eat this right up.

This ARC was provided to me via Kindle, Hachette Books and by #NetGalley. Opinions expressed are completely my own.


A fascinating concept, stories shared that were scandalous by nature at the time. The strength the women had, the length they went to for their freedom is amazing. We should be so bold.