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roam_'s review against another edition
5.0
We are fortunate that a writer of the caliber of Mari Sandoz grew up in the Nebraska panhandle and was willing to write a story depicting the life of her violent, visionary father, Jules Sandoz. Unlike so many books on homesteading on the North American great plains, Old Jules is NOT romantic, either in trumpeting the settlers as heroic Americans or in swooning over them as tragic martyrs. Jules was a self-appointed 'locator' who helped new arrivals to find and settle into an allotment and understand what was involved in staking their claim. Jules was always writing angry diatribes about post offices, land frauds, and the cattlemen who seemed determined to acquire all the free land. Jules was also well-known statewide as a horticulturist as he was moderately successful in growing fruit trees in the sandhills. And Sandoz pulls no punches in depicting her father as a ruthless patriarch who enforced obedience and endless labor from his wife, Mary, and their six children. The book begins in the Spring of 1884 when "the border towns of Rock and Cherry counties were shaking off the dullness of winter" and concludes in Winter of 1928 at the side of Jules' deathbed.
Outside the late fall wind swept over the hard-land country of the upper Running Water, tearing at the low sandy knolls that were the knees of the hills, shifting, but not changing, the unalterable sameness of the somnolent land spreading away toward the East.As a reader growing up in South Dakota, I had a vague sense of Mari Sandoz as a write of children's books, sort of homely little stories about living on the plains. And, indeed, Sandoz is an award-winning author of children's books. Yet, I was unaware of her adult fiction/nonfiction. Comparing Sandoz and Willa Cather, the canonicalized writer of he American great plains, is a good exercise in articulating how the romanticism of Cather and others like her contribute to the enduring myths of settler colonialism. Sandoz has been called 'the storycatcher of the plains' - makes sense.
scoobielaura23's review against another edition
This is the most aweful book I've ever been forced to read. Ever.
kdtoverbooked's review against another edition
4.0
I don’t know how I made it through schooling in Western Nebraska and never read any Mari Sandoz. I, of course, had heard of her but had not previously taken the time to read any. A friend suggested it as one of her favorite reads and I can see why. If you are fan of Willa Cather’s My Antonia, you should definitely pick this one up.