This book was a surprise to me, I wasn't expecting it to be so good.
Beautifully written, and thoroughly researched, it shows an interesting and fascinating part of the American history.

BUYING A BRIDE by Marcia A. Zug is a fascinating timeline of bride buying beginning with the Tobacco Wives of the Jamestown Community through the post-Civil War era. While mail-order marriage offered women benefits including legal, social and political freedoms, many came at a high cost.

Zug wades through the court cases to tell many of the stories of women who were defrauded, abused, trafficked, and worse.

It's a fascinating story well worth the read.

This book really surprised me in its depth, history and research. I thought that the eastern bloc bride buying among wealthier men looking for a pretty girl out of their league was mostly a 20th century modern day phenomenon, but was I wrong. This research takes us from Jamestown to Asia and throughout time. It was very interesting and simultaneously depressing to hear about this trade of women.

This is an interesting part of American history, which I knew almost nothing about, but I'm still not convinced that having mail-order brides is a good idea....