📖 Love and Loss After Wounded Knee: A Biography of an Extraordinary Interracial Marriage by Julie Dobrow

A poignant tapestry of love, resilience, and cultural collision in the shadow of America’s darkest hours.

✨ Review
🔹 Emotional Depth: Dobrow masterfully weaves a heart-wrenching yet hopeful narrative of love that defied racial and cultural barriers in post-massacre America.

🔹 Historical Context: The Wounded Knee backdrop adds profound weight to this personal story, revealing how national trauma shapes intimate lives.

🔹 Character Portrayal: The central couple emerges as fully dimensional figures—their struggles, joys, and quiet rebellions feel vividly immediate.

🔹 Writing Style: Elegant prose balances scholarly detail with novelistic sensitivity, though some sections could tighten their pacing.

🔹 Cultural Insight: Offers rare, nuanced perspectives on Native-white relations during a transformative and violent era.

⭐ Star Breakdown (0–5)
Emotional Impact: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)
Historical Value: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)
Character Development: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)
Narrative Flow: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)
Original Perspective: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)
Overall: 4.8/5 - A love story that heals historical wounds while breaking your heart anew.

🙏 Thank you to NetGalley and Julie Dobrow for the advance review copy. Love and Loss After Wounded Knee transforms forgotten whispers of the past into an unforgettable chorus of human connection.

This is one of the best books I've read lately. Married during an era when biracial marriages were not acceptable, in a climate primed for violence, these two astounding people would make a difference by standing together against popular opinion. It's hard to believe that the prejudice was so prevalent. Julie Dobrow has written an essential record of the lives and events in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

An incredible account Charles and Elaine Eastman! I'm so impressed by the work and research done by Julie Dobrow. The book is factual and concise but written so well and compelling. I've not often read dual biographies but I really enjoyed the separate introduction, the convergence, and eventual separation. The account of the Wounded Knee Massacre through the Eastman's eyes was deeply heartbreaking and I think you can really see the way it affected them through the rest of their lives, personally and professionally. I think it's essential reading for anyone who enjoys history as there are so many topics covered and experienced by the Eastman's: racial prejudice, biracial marriage prejudice and struggles, sexism, varying social and economic pressures. So much happened to these two, it's truly amazing they both lived so long under so much stress and pressure.

I will be purchasing a physical copy once it is published!

Thank you to NetGalley and NYU Press for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Love and Loss After Wounded Knee is a dual biography that follows the marriage of Elaine Goodale and Ohíye’Sa (Dr Charles Alexander Eastman). This details their early lives and very different experiences with Elaine being a white woman poet and writer who traveled to the Dakota Territories to teach Native American students. She believed assimilation was the best way for Native Americans to succeed and remained firm in her ideas until she died. Dr Charles was a Dakota Sioux from Minnesota who was seen as the perfect assimilated Indian. Elaine and Charles met just before the Wounded Knee Massacre and had a shared vision to work on behalf of Indians. They faced prejudice but it was personal issues that pulled them apart.

This was written extremely well and this was really compelling. It was easy for me to imagine the scenes described in the book. It is clear the author has researched this book well. I would urge anyone who has a slight interest in this to give it a go. As a Brit, I don’t know that much about Native Americans and I had never heard of Elaine or Charles. I found this fascinating particularly how Elaine and Charles made their marriage work despite prejudice and personal differences. It is clear to me after reading this book that Elaine had good intentions to improve the lives of Indians but was very much stuck in the idea of assimilation and the values of the time period she lived in. Charles wanted to do good for Indian communities and knew he had to appear assimilated to the Euro-Americans in order for him to succeed. This was great, I really enjoyed this and I’ll be thinking about this for a long time.