Old Jules

First published in 1935, Old Jules is unquestionably Mari Sandoz?s masterpiece. This portrait of her pioneer father grew out of ?the silent hours of listening behind the stove or the wood box, when it was assumed, of course, that I was asleep in bed. So it was that I heard the accounts of the hunts,? Sandoz recalls. "Of the fights with the cattlemen and the sheepmen, of the tragic scarcity of women, when a man had to ?marry anything that got off the train,? of the droughts, the storms, the wind and isolation. But the most impressive stories were those told me by Old Jules himself.? This Bison Books edition includes a new introduction by Linda M. Hasselstrom.

By zealous research, keen observation, and wide-ranging and deeply probing commentary, Mari Sandoz has become one of the most famous and well-respected interpreters of the American West. Old Jules Country is made up of the region thatøSandoz has written about most frequently?the High Plains of the Dakotas, Montana, Nebraska, and Wyoming?the Black Hills, the Bad Lands, the sandhills, and the great rivers: the Missouri, the Platte, and the Yellowstone. Here are selections from the six volumes of her acclaimed Great Plains Series The Beaver Men, Crazy Horse, Cheyenne Autumn, The Buffalo Hunters, The Cattlemen, and Old Jules and from her study of a great people, These Were the Sioux. Also included are two essays, "The Lost Sitting Bull" and "The Homestead in Perspective." A Cheyenne prayer and two sketches unavailable elsewhere?"Snakes" and "Coyotes and Eagles"?complete the collection. This anthology provides a stimulating sampling for readers not yet acquainted with Sandoz's work. For her extensive following, it offers the opportunity for a satisfying reappraisal of her overall achievement.

Mari Sandoz immortalized her irascible father in Old Jules. Now her brother, Jules Sandoz, Jr. fills out the story of their family life, dominated by Papa, in western Nebraska in the early l900s. A frail boy who clung to the skirts of his German grandmother, Jules Jr. had to learn lessons of survival early. He was beaten up by his schoolmates and did not speak English well, but with his brother James he helped feed the family by hunting and trapping. Eventually he found the strength to stand up to his father. Son of Old Jules offers fresh glimpses of other family members, most memorably of Mary, his hardworking and stoical mother and of Mari, who de-clared her independence by becoming a schoolteacher and marrying and then divorcing a local swain. Some of the Sandhillers who figured in Mari's books appear here too, including a succession of immigrants whom Papa Jules recruited as settlers. By the early twenties, when these memoirs end, Jules Jr., newly married, had gone into farming for himself Corroborating and fleshing out the story of the family told by Mari Sandoz, Son of Old Jules was written "to give a more balanced view of the settler period." Jules Sandoz, Jr. recorded his memories in the last years of his life, and after his death in 1980 they were edited and organized into book form by his youngest sister, Caroline Sandoz Pifer.

Recreates the life of a Swiss-born Nebraska homesteader, while reflecting on the character of the people who shaped the American nation

Life story of the Oglala Sioux chieftain from boyhood to his death in 1877.

“A carnivalesque romp through middle age, addressing the menace of mortality while lampooning comic stereotypes . . . Pulses with life” (The Globe and Mail, Toronto). In this sharp-witted tale of desperation and decadence, a middle-aged man tries to escape the anxieties of failure and grueling reality of everyday existence with a wide range of distractions—from an opulent home renovation to torrents of pornography to alcohol and pills and fast cars. He’s been told again and again that asceticism and a bit of restraint might serve him better, spiritually speaking. But temptation seems to follow him everywhere—and soon the house of cards he’s been building may completely collapse. “Unconventional . . . That the book works so well is testament both to Christie’s wonderfully alert writing and the way she maintains a perfectly balanced moral tone throughout.” —National Post