Jim Fergus was born in Chicago in 1950 to a French mother and an American father. He graduated as an English major from Colorado College after attending high school in Massachusetts. Over the years, he has lived in various places, including Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Arizona, the French West Indies, and France. For a decade, he worked as a teaching tennis pro in Colorado and Florida. In 1980, he moved to North Park, Colorado, to become a full-time freelance writer. During the subsequent two decades, he published numerous articles, essays, interviews, and profiles in various regional and national magazines and newspapers. His first book, a travel/sporting memoir titled A HUNTER'S ROAD, was published by Henry Holt in 1992. In a review by Jonathan Kirsch for the Los Angeles Times, A HUNTER'S ROAD was described as "an absorbing, provocative, and even enchanting book."In 1998, St. Martin's Press published Fergus's debut novel, ONE THOUSAND WHITE WOMEN: The Journals of May Dodd. The book received the 1999 Fiction of the Year Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association. It has become a favorite among book clubs across the United States and has sold over one million copies in the country alone. The French version of the book, MILLE FEMMES BLANCHES, which was published in 2000, won the "Best First Foreign Novel" award and remained on the bestseller list in France for 57 weeks.