Books by Mari Sandoz

Mari Sandoz was a tireless researcher, a true storyteller, an artist passionately dedicated to a place little known and a people largely misunderstood. This work includes letters written by her - from 1928, the year of her father's death and a critical one for her creative development, to 1966, the year of her own death.

Presents Mari Sandoz's reminiscences of life in the Sandhills country; a study of the two Sitting Bulls (the Hunkpapa and the Oglala) and other Indian pieces; a novelette, Bone Joe and the Smokin' Woman; and, nine short stories, mostly with a rural setting, including "The Vine", her first to be published.

"The Sioux Indians came into my life before I had any preconceived notions about them," writes the author about the visitors to her family homestead in the Sandhills of Nebraska when she was a child. This title takes the reader far inside a world of rituals surrounding puberty, courtship, and marriage, as well as the hunt and the battle.

Slogum House lay on the winter flat of Oxbow like the remains of some great, hulking animal that had foraged the region long ago, leaving its old gray carcass to dry and bleach at the foot of the hogback. Ruled by Gulla Slogum, the house was headquarters for a clan that terrorized what it couldn't seduce or steal.

Features the story of a gambler and townsite promoter who founded Cozad, Nebraska, and of his family, particularly his younger son, who became a world-famous artist and teacher known as 'Robert Henri'. This work is Robert's story, the story of a sensitive talented boy growing up in the midst of frontier violence.

A hold, biting novel by the author of Old Jules and Crazy Horse, The Tom-Walker spans three generations in a Midwestern family.The patriarch, Milt Stone, who lost a leg fighting in Grant''s army, is the Tom-Walker, circus slang for man on stilts. After the Civil War he takes his family west to the Missouri country. There he gains a reputation as a raconteur and as a passionate defender of the little man who works hard, fights the wars, and gets squeezed out by powerful interests. He lives to see his son and grandson fight in World War I and World War II, respectively, and return home from those wars, maimed like him, only to have to resume a fight just to stay alive.Crowded with living characters, The Tom-Walker never loses the larger view of American history. From the Gilded Age to the Atomic Age, everybody is "trying to be either a Jay Gould or a Jesse James, out for easy money, everybody [is] wanting to be king of something: mines, railroads, cattle, outlaws, anything." How people like the Stones fare is the story within this story."Rich and warm and extravagant and deeply rooted in what her America has been and is."-New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review"A vigorous and thoughtful novel. " -New York Times"There is a good deal of America in the book, and the narrative teems with violent energy."-New Yorker

Dealing with the aspects of the Old West, this title offers an introduction to Sandoz Country. It introduces people such as: the Sandoz patriarch, the fiery libertarian Old Jules; Marlizzie, the archetypal pioneer woman who was Mari's mother; and, siblings, chums, neighbors, homesteaders, and Indians.

Fleeing the East and a heartbreaking past, Morissa Kirk finds the North Platte River Valley rife with rumors of gold strikes. Fortune hunters, desperadoes, horse thieves, murderers make up the frontier society, while Indians roam the plains refusing to surrender their land to the gold-hungry white men.

Tells of a long-ago Christmas in western Nebraska, when Mari Sandoz's father's house was filled with good music. But, the entire family soon entered into the holiday spirit, as neighbors arrived to feast and dance and enjoy musical selections ranging from Lucia di Lammermoor to Casey at the Telephone. Even old enmities dissolved under the spell.

Presents selections from the author's works. This book features such essays The Lost Sitting Bull and The Homestead in Perspective.

First published in the dark days immediately before World War II, this novel is a portrayal of how the Depression affected the Great Plains. It examines the forces that bitterly contended for wealth and power.

Presents a lyric salute to the earth and sky and people who made the history of the Great Plains. This title tells: of a story of men and women of many huesocourageous, violent, in-domitable, foolishotheir legends, failures, and achievements; of explorers and fur trappers and missionaries; and, of soldiers and army posts and Indian fighting.

Tells the story of the cattle industry in America and of the men whose ranches reached from the Rio Grande into Montana, from the early Spanish days to Mari Sandoz's contemporary times. It is the second in Sandoz's trilogy of books narrating the history of the American West in relation to animal species.

Covering more than two centuries, The Beaver Men recounts the beginning of the beaver trade along the St. Lawrence to the last great rendezvous of traders and trappers on Ham's Fork, in what is now Wyoming, in 1834. The Beaver Men is the third in Mari Sandoz's trilogy of books narrating the history of the American West in relation to an animal species.

In 1867, conservative estimates put the number of buffaloes in the trans-Missouri region at fifteen million. By the end of the 1880s, that figure had dwindled to a few hundred. This title focuses on the destruction of the great herds.