For a woman traveling without her husband in the late nineteenth century, there was only one reason to take the train all the way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. On the American frontier, the new state’s laws 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 unexpected headquarters for society divorcees—infamous around the world as the “divorce colony.” These divorce seekers put Sioux Falls at the center of a heated national debate over the future of American marriage.

At the turn of the century, clashes mounted between religious leaders, congressmen, and enterprising lawyers; gossip columns, church halls, and even the U.S. Supreme Court became battlegrounds. As the nation grappled with the social, political, legal, and religious implications of divorce, the women caught in the crosshairs in Sioux Falls geared up for a fight they didn’t go looking for, a fight that was the only path to their freedom.

Entertaining, enlightening, and utterly feminist, The Divorce Colony is a rich, deeply researched tapestry of social history and human drama that reads like a novel, laying bare the journey of four women who took their lives into their own hands, and forever changed the country’s attitudes about marriage and divorce.