Cimarron

by Edna Ferber

The basis for the Academy Award-winning major motion picture starring Best Actor nominee Richard Dix and Best Actress nominee Irene Dunne.

This vivid and sweeping tale of the Oklahoma Land Rush, from Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber, traces the stunning challenges of settling an untamed frontier. Staking claim to their new home in Osage, Yancey Cravat, a spellbinding criminal lawyer, and his wife, well-bred Sabra, work against seemingly overwhelming odds to create a prosperous life for themselves. And as they establish themselves in this lawless land, Sabra displays a brilliant business sense and makes a success of their local newspaper, the Oklahoma Wigwam, all amidst border and land disputes, outlaws, and the discovery of oil.

Originally published in 1929, and twice made into a motion picture, Cimarron brings history alive, capturing the settling of the American West in vivid detail.

With a new foreword by Julie Gilbert.

Vintage Movie Classics spotlights classic films that have stood the test of time, now rediscovered through the publication of the novels on which they were based.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, Westerns, Novels, American, Book Club

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were popular in her lifetime and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron (1929; made into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), and Giant (1952; made into the 1956 Hollywood movie).

Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber. At the age of 12, after living in Chicago, Illinois and Ottumwa, Iowa, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel. She covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.

Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.

Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.

Reviews

[Jeff Jellets · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most popular book of 1930!

So my second crazy reading goal of 2017 is to read the “most popular” book of the year for each year that ends in zero, beginning in 1930. I’m intentionally choosing “popular” books over either “classic” or “critically acclaimed” because I’m hoping to catch a little bit of the cultural zeitgeist that was prevalent at the time. Kind of like … what were people “into” back then and what resonated with them.

Hence Cimarron by Edna Ferber. Set against the rough and tumble Oklahoma land rush of 1889 and continuing through the fledgling state’s formative years, Cimarron tells the story of the Cravat family, plucky pioneers settling one of America’s last frontiers. It’s pretty much a one generation, historical family saga – much like I imagine a Mitchener book might be – and (truth be told) a genre that I usually can’t be bothered with. So my expectations were low …. but I found this one … a little bit charming?

Ferber picks a great setting for her story. ‘The Run’ for land in the newly opened Oklahoma Territory is one of history’s great, mad races, and Ferber stirs the adrenaline as eager pioneers crowd the Oklahoma border, ready to charge into the no man’s land at the shot of a pistol. As the years progress, Ferber paints a vivid, gritty picture of the hardscrabble, but up-and-coming, community, growing from hamlet to ‘big oil’ boom town. Her character work is also quite nice. Our heroine, Sabra Cravat, is a tough little cookie – kind of a proto-Scarlet O’Hara – while her husband Yancey is more the ne'er-do-well gunslinger with politically progressive tendencies. (He’s also a complete cad … leaving the long-suffering Sabra and children in the lurch an unforgivable amount of times). And Ferber’s prose, though littered at times with plenty of ten dollar words, is certainly amiable enough – clever, witty with her dialogue, occasionally funny, slightly musical without being baroque.

The downside is that – as in the real world -- the cute and quaint is tarred pretty heavily with prejudice. The daughter of a Jewish family, Ferber knew discrimination well, and she portrays it unflinchingly in Cimarron, describing the racism faced by women, African Americans, Native Americans, and Jews in the territory. The tonal shift – from the almost fairy tale aspects of the settlers’ stories to their opinions of minorities -- is jarring and uncomfortable, especially as bigotry taints even the redoubtable Sabra. Despite their prominence and despite Yancey’s championing of the downtrodden and Sabra’s tenacity, the Cravats pale morally in comparison to many of the minority characters in the book.

And this is where Cimarron is deceptively complex. Mostly it reads like a bright historical romance, but then there are these awful deep parts – none darker than what happens to the poor boy Isaiah – all presented at face value, leaving the reader to parse out the inequality. Menfolk, for example, may have grabbed the headlines and been made the subject of statues with their six-shooters and swagger, but it was the indefatigable pioneer women – largely overlooked -- who laid the bedrock for the society that grew on those empty plains. Ultimately, Cimarron is a subtle cry for recognition for all those folk that pioneer history had seemed to forget, ignore or outright abuse.

P.S. It’s a bit easier to appreciate ‘Cimarron’ if you know a bit more about its author. There’s a nice biography of Edna Ferber at https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/...

P.P.S. And if you want to follow along at home, I’m pulling my reading list from (of all places) Good Housekeeping. You can check out the list at http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/...

P.P.P.S. Next up, 1940’s ‘How Green Was My Valley.’ Guess I better stock up on tissues.

[Karyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining with bright and colorful characters and the landscape itself, Cimarron is a witty satire of the Oklahoma territory. I can’t say that I was ever interested in this place but Edna Ferber had me turning the pages until the very end.
Found in a free little library and passed on to a friend.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not my favorite book on this subject..

3* Show Boat
3* So Big
3* My Story That I Like Best
3* Cimarron

[Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are two excellent film versions (in my opinion, some people don't like either version) of this novel, one in 1930 starring Irene Dunne and another in 1960 starring Maria Schell. They adapt the novel in very different ways, highlighting certain characters over others and changing events at will. This is quite easy to do, not to mention necessary, because the source material is a shambling mess. In the films, Sabra becomes sympathetic over time. In the novel, she remains fairly racist throughout and is always aghast at something her husband does. We never get a sense of what attracted her to Yancy in the first place. She remains static, frustrated, and frustrating to me till the end. The film versions manage to effectively soften her with time, thereby enabling us to see her as a pioneer. The novel lacked everything that I loved about "So Big!" -- the woman's strength of character, the well-drawn supporting characters, the lived-in passage of time. The author's vocabulary tended to be so overblown I could barely stomach it. I know that Ferber has a good track record with incorporating minorities into her stories, but her descriptions and characterizations felt like they contained attitudes and ideas that were not subjective to Sabra but were rather lazily written passages in which Ferber did not attempt to extricate herself from conventional stereotypes of her day. The Indians are always lazy or barbaric, the blacks are made for servitude, and Saul Levy gets to be a silent and hidden pillar of his community, and basically a eunuch.

[Lora · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book to the point of almost four stars. I think it fell a bit short because of the simplest thing- it wasn't my first Edna Ferber. When I finished it, I was a bit floored by what she'd accomplished, nonetheless. It was a kind of western version of Anna Karenina. The main female protagonist in Cimarron, Sabra, reminded me of Levin. She worked hard and her star rose slowly but surely. Yancey was Anna- living the exciting life, not thinking of the effects he had of his family, and facing a dismal end. That wasn't quite a spoiler, but the book is nearly a hundred years old, so whatever.
It is a good western with larger than life characters, some balanced perspective on blacks and indians, and a strong sense of cause and effect. There were some pretty sad parts for a book that started off so wild and loud. I especially mourned for Sabra as she witnessed the effects of a deadbeat dad on her children.
You have to know, there are racist attitudes in here. Sabra has them in spades. There are cruel descriptions, coarse terms for people, and outlandish behaviors from person to person and group to group. It just is what it is. Heck, the irish guy doesn't look too good and I accepted that. Those issues do not stand in the way of the ultimate moral foundations of the book, nor the crazy adventures it holds. It shows a complex situation and how things changed along the way. It probably isn't entirely true or accurate, but I found it valuable in the way it just put everything out there and let me the reader make my own judgments and decisions on a semi-fictional world in a fictional work.

[K.M. Weiland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cimarron marks the end (for now) of my excursion into Edna Ferber's works, and it embodies many of the strengths and flaws Ferber portrays in all her stories.

On the plus side, we have strong, almost painfully realistic characters. There is a demanding undercurrent of no-nonsense tell-it-like-it-is beneath Ferber's romanticism, just as there are startling cliche busters hiding behind the melodrama. In addition to her always vivid sense of setting, I appreciate her warty characters. They aren't always lovable, but they're always intriguing.

However, Cimarron also suffers from the same flaws as do the rest of her books. The prose seems even more overblown and purple than usual here. Ferber knows how to pick the telling details and she can turn a beautiful phrase. But she also likes to heap on the glittery descriptive phrases like too many toppings on a pizza. Even more concerning, however, is her tendency to carefully and slowly build the story, only to chop it off in a hurried and abrupt ending.

[Lee Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another strong Ferber novel. This one reads like a practice run for Giant: genteel woman goes into the Wild West, finds she's stronger than she knew. Giant is the far better novel, though, with this one having a rushed ending and feeling like a compressed epic. There are also several troubling-for-today's-times depictions of African-Americans, Native Americans, and Jews. Be prepared to put things in the context of the age, and you can still find a lot to enjoy here.

[LobsterQuadrille · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me Cimarron falls into the category of "pretty good" Edna Ferber books. It's better than Giant but not at the level of Show Boat or So Big. I would rank it alongside Ice Palace, since I ended up solidly liking both. Cimarron is more consistent than Ice Palace, but at the end I felt slightly unsatisfied with the heroine. Sabra Cravat is undeniably a woman who can rise to the challenges life throws at her, but it feels like her persistent racism isn't fully explored or resolved, especially with the book's pro-Native American message. And sinceher son marries Ruby,an Osage woman, it would have been better to see Sabra interact more with Ruby and her mixed-race grandchildren to see if and how she altered her views.

Ruby is quite a highlight, and I would have loved to see her as more of a central character. Her veiled contempt of Sabra's proto-soccer mom world of pineapple-and-marshmallow salads(yes, you read that correctly) is quite funny and hints at some interesting depths of character.

Cimarron is both a tribute to the endurance and resourcefulness of female settlers and a criticism of Manifest Destiny. Sabra's husband Yancey is the mouthpiece through which the government's treatment of Native Americans is lamented, but he is also the most puzzling character in the book. When we first meet Yancey he is charismatic, physically impressive, and seemingly the cultural ideal of an American pioneer. But as the plot progresses, cracks start to appear in this façade of romance. Yancey leaves Sabra and their children for five years without so much as a letter of explanation, and returns to grace his disillusioned family with his presence for one whole day before riding off to the Spanish-American War in a snazzy new uniform. After this he neglects his business, defends the local brothel madam from Sabra's attempts to eject her business from town, and may or may not be turning into an alcoholic. Arguably worst of all is his hypocrisy. Yancey constantly preaches about the injustices done towards the Native Americans, yet he actively participates in the settling of the very lands taken from them by the government, while doing nothing significant to help their cause. It becomes increasingly clear that Yancey is all talk, no action. His charisma and flowery speeches cause all those around him to excuse his selfish actions and moral weakness. Yancey is weak, and Sabra is left to pick up after his selfish actions and becomes stronger than him in many ways.

The reason I have discussed Yancey at such length is because of an odd Peer Gynt reference at the very end. As different as Cimarron and Peer Gynt may be at the surface, Ferber's equating of Yancey to Peer and Sabra to Solveig makes sense. Yancey and Peer are both charming, persuasive tale-tellers whose underlying weaknesses are exposed when they face hardships. Sabra and Solveig are the women who love them despite their repeated failings, and are left holding the proverbial bag. Another interesting detail is the fact that Peer Gynt made money from being a slave trader but tried to excuse this later by treating his own slaves well(though Peer is a notorious liar so this should be taken with a grain of salt). Yancey's willingness to decry the plight of Native Americans without doing anything to remedy it may reflect this.

Cimarron is worth a try for any Edna Ferber fan, but despite my overly long character analysis here I came away from it feeling like some piece of the puzzle was still missing. There is some great social criticism in Cimarron, but parts of Sabra and Yancey's character arcs needed more fleshing out.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2899947.html

Cimarron is a really good book, a feminist text (the words "feminist" and "feminism" are actually used) whose guts were torn out of it by Hollywood. The central character of the novel is Sabra Cravat, daughter of a Southern family who moved to Kansas after the Civil War; having married Yancey at a very young age, she is swept off to Oklahoma by him. She breaks away from the stereotypes of her Southern parents, and gets over many of her own hangups, to build a new version of society in the town of Osage, to the point where she herself is elected to Congress. Cimarron was the best-selling novel in America in 1930, and the film's popularity must surely have been a reward for its insipid reflection of the popular original text. I was struck that the opening titles featured the characters and actors playing each, which looked like an assumption that many viewers would already be familiar with them.

However, we are a long way from intersectionality, and the book is still pretty racist, if not quite as racist as the film. There is still only one named black character (who suffers an even more horrible end than his screen version), though it's also clear that there are lots of others in the town. While Sabra's view of the Indians is pretty bigoted, the unreliable Yancey is totally on their side, and preaches to her frequently about the disgrace of the Trail of Tears and the awful things that white men have done; this is somehow dropped from the film. (Also worth noting that the Vice-President of the United States at the time the film was made was actually descended from the Osage tribe, and remains the only Native American to have served at the top of the executive branch.) The one Jewish character is sympathetically treated in both book and film, but the nasty anti-Semitism of the baddies in the book doesn't make it to the screen.

The feminism of the book is completely erased by the film, in that Yancey is given much more screen time and better lines (though his defence of the Indians is removed), and we are cut off from Sabra's internal dialogue, which is the loudest voice in the novel; it is replaced by Turner’s sighs and meaningful glances. The sub-plot with the sex workers in the book is explicitly a dialogue about different visions of womanhood in the new society that is being built, but becomes just a humorous set of vignettes in the film (apart from Yancey's courtroom defence of Dixie Lee, which in fairness is actually done better on screen than on the page). I'm not especially well versed in the early twentieth century history of American feminism, but it seemed clear to me that the makers of a Hollywood blockbuster did not feel able to reflect the feminism of their source text.

I enjoyed the book much more than I had expected to, and the film's success was surely in large part a homage to the work it was based on.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was introduced to these characters as a short story in the 7th grade. Our class was so enthralled with it; the teacher told us that it was an excerpt from a book. We begged to read it – and she adjusted the curriculum to accommodate it. I am quite sure that I read it at least six times during my high school years. Loved the story, the characters and the history lesson.

[John Freeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ferber brings the west to life in this sprawling historical novel about Oklahoma—from the Land Rush of 1889, through statehood, to the 2nd oil boom. Set in fictional Osage, Cimarron is the story of Sabra and Yancey Cravat, whose relationship could be seen as a metaphor for the settling and taming of the Indian territories.

Sabra, the main protagonist, is a typical Ferber female heroine: smart, strong, self-sufficient, principled and independent. But she’s a tragic hero too, flawed with bigotry, narrow-mindedness, intolerance and co-dependency. She runs the state’s largest newspaper and is elected to Congress, but her husband has fled the home and her kids inherited the worst traits of their parents and grandparents. Like the character, Salina, in So Big, Sabra is unable to influence those she cares the most about.

Yancey is an almost mythic character, larger than life, as big and wild and temperamental as the land the story is set in. Sabra represents the settling forces of the west—morals, laws, society. Yancey represents the frontier spirit, who, like the Oklahoma territory, is subject to the swiftly changing times.

Fitting that Yancey dies in a work mishap at an oil well, symbolic of how oil killed the “old” frontier.

The third character in Cimarron is the land itself. Like Willa Cather does in some of her works, or Knut Hamson in Growth of the Soil, the landscape serves as an antagonist, shaping the lives of the Cravats.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Ferber, and I really liked the first two-thirds of it, before it ran out of gas. Set over the course of 20 years, from the Oklahoma land rush to Oklahoma statehood, the book follows a wildly mismatched married couple, Yancey and Sabra Cravat, as they head to Osage, OK, to start a newspaper. At first our sympathies are with Yancey, the crazy romantic dreamer and idealist. But over the passage of time, Ferber shows us how useless and childish Yancey's ideals are, while Sabra, who initiall is boring and unappealing and narrow minded, becomes the true hero of the book, eventually becoming a congresswoman, while Yancey ends a drunk. While Ferber's first hand experience with anti-Semitism gave her sympathy with marginalized groups, her depictions of Native Americans is pretty hard to take, and probably a reason why this writer isn't widely read any more.

[Steve Hockensmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow -- what a mixed bag. Ferber's writing can be incisive and witty. Yet when it comes to the Native American and Black characters, it's also lazy, dumb and racist. It's ironic that a book that's *about* racism in many ways is itself so full of it. It's a shame. I found this to be an interesting and entertaining read...when I wasn't wincing and cringing.

[Clete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edna is a master of recreating stories of American progress and regression, astute in her observations of the nuances of American strength and flaw as our nation built an identity we live with today. I can’t help but think she’d delight in writing the perfect book satirizing the condition of today’s America.

[Chris Gager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Other than a few short stories, this is my first Ferber read, although I have seen a couple of the movies made from her books(Ice Palace, Giant). This book has been filmed twice, but I haven't seen either one. So far it's been a pretty entertaining read. The young, spoiled wife in a savage land is pretty much the same as in "Giant." The hero, Yancey is VERY sympathetic to the plight of the natives, though his immature wife is just the opposite. Will she change????

- This semi-beaten up 1960 paperback has a different cover than the one shown, but the one shown has the best available image.

The action takes a jump in time to get close to the turn of the 20th century as Osage "grows up." This is happening without the assistance of Yancey, who has taken a powder, thus revealing his inner "big-male-baby" thing. Charismatic he is, reliable husband he isn't. Still a good story and pretty realistic, I'd say, after reading of the fate of Isiah the horny and his gal pal ...

Oklahoma shambles toward the 20th Century as Yancey pops up again to stir up trouble for long-suffering proto-feminist Sabra. Then the story jumps ahead in time again. I guess you might call this a mini-epic as it covers a lot of Oklahoma ground, time-wise, but it lacks the narrative depth to be considered a true historical fiction epic a la Michener. Not that I'm a Michener fan, but he DID rack up the pages. As writers go, I definitely prefer Ferber to Michener.

- The French cultural "connection" is also mentioned in "Undaunted Courage" - the presence of French-Canadian trappers in the midwest in the early 1800's.

- The book begins with events only 60 years before I was born, i.e. not that long ago.

- The Kid and his gang might be based on the Daltons.

Finished last night as the wandering Yancey puts in a final, heroic appearance. As the book went on the whole Yancey-Sabra story faded into the background as Ferber focused more on describing events the political and economic(think oil) history of Osage and Oklahoma. The ending comes in the 1920's. Osage seems to be based on Tulsa, as it's the closest big city to the Osage reservation.

- Is it Cibolo, or is it Cibola? She spells it both ways ...

- Sabra may be a liberated photo-feminist, but she still calls Indians "filthy savages" - UGH!

- Are easy enough book to read, and fairly informative, but no great shakes as literature. 3.25* rounds down to 3*.

[Amber Scaife · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story of Yancy and Sabra Cravat, a young married couple who set out from Kansas to join the Oklahoma land rush.

This American ‘classic’ has…not aged well.

[Gizem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historically accurate book with a heartbreaking ending. I was angry with Yancey all the time while reading because he seemed off, but at the same time, I couldn't stop myself from thinking that he was doing the right thing for his family's future. On another hand, I found Sabra quite fearful and prejudiced, even though I didn't blame her for this. This is a must-read book if you are interested in historical fiction. Cimarron consists of stereotypes back in the previous century.

[Elisabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

I usually only rate books one star for terrible writing or objectionable content, but in this case, it's simply because I didn't like it.

Review to follow.

[Anne Monteith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tale of the settling of the Oklahoma Territory beginning with the first run for land. When Yancey Yarbrough return from the first run without the land he went after he is still determined to return to the territory. He and his wife Sabra and their four year old son Cinarron are living with her parents in Kansas an his is sick of "civilized" life in there and longs for the adventure, freedom and openness of the new territory. Despite the misgivings of her family Sabra and Cim join Yancey and travel back to Oklahoma where he plans to start a newspaper and possibly use his law degree although he dislike being a lawyer. This is their story of the transformation of a Territory into a state and while the characters are fictional most of the things that the author has written about happened.

Two movies were made based on this novel and while most consider the 1930's one the best, I find the acting portrayed by Dix to somewhat ridiculous and comical. I realize that he came form the silent era, but his mannerisms make the film comical.

In reading these books reader need to remember they were written in a time when people thought and acted differently than we do today. The book is wordy as most novels from this time are but it is still a good book and worth reading for those interested in factual historical fiction.

4.25/5 Stars

[Janis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hats and calico sun bonnets off to all of the pioneer women, including the fictitious Sabra Cravatt who settled and survived in the new Oklahoma Territory in the late 1800s. I am so glad that my Classic Book Club chose this book for out September, 2017 selection. It is historical and romantic. She describes the land vividly from its infancy to the discovery of its oil. As relationships sour and mend, it can also be sad, but thought provoking.
Sarah Cravatt, the heroine, is strong and way ahead of her time, and she needs to be with her erstwhile and charismatic husband Yancey. It is sympathetic to the dreamers and the Indian tribes who have been moved from one reservation to another. It contains the many characters who appear in many stories about the development of the west, but Ferber does not stereotype them. Each of their stories present an integral part to a really good and believable story.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was right up my alley. Loved it. I found it a rollicking good read, filled with great history, adventure and awesome flawed characters. As far as heroes or anti-heroes go, Yancey is one of the greats. He's a macho, heady adventurer, a die-hard frontiersman and a defender of the Native Americans. He's unconventional and irresponsible, but committed to his lifestyle. Likewise, his wife Sabra, the book's main character, exhibits both positive and negative characteristics and remains committed to her own points of view. Her reactions to Yancey and to the developments in her own life are realistic. I didn't love Sabra, but I found her interesting. I loved Yancey, flawed as he is. The occasional dips from heady romantic adventure into dark and tragic moments kept this book real and interesting. A great piece of historical fiction.

[Rose Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my Edna Ferber anthology, this is one I would gladly skip in the future. The characters didn't seem to have any...well, character to them. I was bored through most of it, and struggled to finish. If you're looking for a good book about the early history of Oklahoma, this is not one to read in my opinion.
ADDED: After reading other reviews, I'm wondering if my opinions were affected by my watching the 1960 movie before reading the book. I thought the movie was horrible, and maybe some of that feeling was reflected in my reading. I'd like to see the Academy Award-winning 1931 movie version instead, and maybe my opinions would change. But unlike So Big and Show Boat, I just didn't get anything out of this book.

[Joe Davoust · Rating 4 out of 5]

This could be a companion piece to Killers of the Flower Moon, a non-fiction book I read l last year about the Osage Indians, how they were forced onto reservations that later yielded oil and wealth and eventual exploitation of that wealth by unscrupulous white men. Only this tells the fictional account of a family of mostly-white Oklahoma settlers and how they interacted with them. This book is epic in scope as it covers multiple generations. It is entertaining and because it doesn’t go into too much about the viscous treatment of the Osage, is not as bleak as Killers. Still sad in many places though.

[Library Nymph · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dear Jebus, what a crap-load of depression!

[Steven Meyers · Rating 5 out of 5]

"An Oklahoma Opus"

Some people have truly impressive bucket lists: going over Niagara Falls in a transparent barrel, cliff diving into the Mediterranean Sea, or maybe having Tom Hanks officiate their wedding at a nudist colony. I have more modest goals. There was only one book given as a middle or high school assignment that I did not completely read. Back in 1974, our eighth-grade, Madawaska, Maine teacher handed out Edna Ferber’s ‘Cimarron.’ As a result, I did poorly on the quiz, and it’s always bothered me that I never finished the thing. Well, 49-years later this bald ole slacker decided to check the annoyance off his friggin’ list. The book was published in 1930.

‘Cimarron’ is about the settling of Oklahoma. The message Ms. Ferber hoped to convey was “to show the triumph of materialism over the spirit of America.” It was not meant to be taken as a celebration or just an adventure/romance. To her frustration, readers took it as the latter instead of the former. The author’s disappointment echoed Upton Sinclair’s displeasure in how the public reacted to his pro-socialist novel ‘The Jungle’ by focusing on the small section about the meat industry’s practices. My guess is cultural attitudes during early-1900 America did not pick up on the author’s criticisms because viewing Native Americans as deviant vermin was still a widely held belief at the time and materialism had become an integral part of the American psyche. Nearly a hundred years later, Ms. Ferber’s critique came across loud and clear to me. She also did an excellent job in depicting the harsh conditions of being a territory settler and settling into a nascent town. The place is a crude, ugly, one-street town called Osage and reminded me of the excellent HBO series ‘Deadwood’ but without so much profanity. The protagonists of the book, Yancy and Sabra Cravat, give very different perspectives of their new homestead. While Yancy is enthusiastic about their new lifestyle, his 21-year-old wife misses her more established civilized life back in Wichita, Kansas. The people who inhabit late-1800s Oklahoma are a rough, uncouth, colorful lot that add more texture to the story. Native Americans have given up the fight to hold onto their land, even the areas formally agreed by the federal government, but there are still plenty of dangers out-and-about that settlers must endure. Ms. Ferber does a nice job of depicting Yancy and Sabra as complex individuals that evolve during the story. As the town slowly starts to gel into a proper community, the area suddenly goes through an upheaval with the discovery of oil. The Oklahoma territory is inundated with prospectors hoping to cash in and the residents also catch oil fever, hoping to become rich. The first part of the story focuses more on Yancy while the second section of the book gives Sabra most of the attention. It concludes with the maturation of Osage from a dinky unkept town into a bustling center of commerce and social posturing. The ending was somewhat forced and melodramatic.

‘Cimarron’ is a solid novel and I’m glad I revisited it. I like Ms. Ferber’s writing style and may read a few of her other works like ‘Giant’ and her Pulitzer-Prize winning work ‘So Big.’ I understand why our eighth-grade teacher assigned 'Cimarron.' It has romance, adventure, social commentary, and a smidgen of profanity. It was edgy material to hand out to us in our small rural town of 1974. In today's hyper-partisan atmosphere, some misguided adults would likely want it banned in schools because parts of the story deal with racism towards Native Americans, blacks, and Jews. The book is over ninety-years old and still holds up very well.

(P.S. The author, David Grann, does a great job of expanding on the Oklahoma oil boom and the 1920s’ nastiness that happened to the Osage tribe in his outstanding nonfiction work ‘Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.’ It was published in 2018.)

[Russell Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read Edna Ferber’s Show Boat twice and just recently reread her novel Giant, I determined to read more of her work. I read So Big and loved it, and then I turned to Cimarron. The story is that of the settling of the Oklahoma Territory in the 1800s. The saga follows an adventurous dreamer and his society wife as they establish their lives in a muddy little settlement destined to be a bustling city called Osage. Ferber herself admits, in an acknowledgments page, that the entire plot, characters, events, and settings, are entirely from her imagination. It is an exciting story, with its exasperating main character, the dreamer who champions the Indian population, insisting—against the prevailing attitude, and, indeed his wife’s own prejudice—that the Native Americans are human beings worthy of being treated thusly, and his wife, the industrious, practical woman who forges a life for them in this almost wilderness single handedly. Sabra Cravat, daughter of the Kansas City Marcys, willingly follows her husband, Yancy Cravat, to the Oklahoma Territory, not exactly expecting how very different her life will be, and then with determination and steely effort, carves out a life that includes creating a Kansas City-style society for the women of the town and publishing a successful newspaper while still loving her sometimes-there, sometimes-not-there husband. Sabra is another in a list of Ferber’s strong women characters. Ferber herself, I’m certain, was a feminist long before the term was coined perhaps, and most assuredly, long before the feminist was numerous among the American female population. Ferber, in Cimmaron, creates strong characters, an enticing storyline, and she writes with conviction of her own beliefs—most notably, in Yancy’s feelings about the Native Americans. I’m reminded of her other novels like Show Boat, where Blacks are treated with dignity, and Giant, where the female protagonist fights for the rights of Mexican-Americans. I am also amused, and would love someday to come to an understanding of, Ferber’s use of wildly inventive male protagonist names. Here we have Yancy Cravat, a name as fanciful as Show Boat’s Gaylord Ravenal and Giant’s Bick Benedict. Whether to underscore the subtle satire she uses or whether simply to make these characters memorable, Ferber has a fan in me. I love those names!

[Lindsey Sparks]

I can't believe I had no idea this book existed until recently. A book about the land run? That was the most popular book of 1930? Then I read it and ohhhhhhhhhhhhh the racism. From what I have read, including in the foreward and preface, the author did not share the beliefs of many of the characters and was attempting to show sympathy for Native Americans. She was also Jewish and there is quite a bit of racism against Jews, which presumably she did not agree with. But it made for a difficult read. I don't think it's helpful to pretend attitudes like this didn't exist and don't still exist, but there were numerous statements that made me pause in horror. At first, these mainly come from snobby Sabra while white knight Yancey defends Native Americans and brings up issues of taking their land, while at the same time participating in the land run. As we continue on, Yancey becomes the villain, which makes it more strange that he's the least racist, although the standard is so low this isn'tsaying much. We come to admire Sabra in some ways, while still being horrified in many others. And Yancey's anti-racism is more about wanting to smoke peyote and be "free" than any real feeling of equality. After all, he admires the Native Americans but keeps his servant "Black Isaiah" in a KENNEL in one of the most horrific moments. And even Sabra is down right inclusive compared to how the Osage treat Isaiah. And poor Sabra. You hate her in some ways but admire the way she takes on the prairie challenges and holds her own, at least when her sorry excuse of a husband isn't around. But how he treats her and how she takes it is appalling. Again, I don't feel like it's a case of the author having these beliefs, but it made for an unpleasant read at times. And yet. The book wasn't totally horrible or without merit. I enjoyed parts of it and appreciated that the author wanted us to be horrified by the racism and sexism, or at least I think she does. And it does make you appreciate how far we've come, even with the regression of the past few years. A good reminder not to keep moving backward.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

We read another old tome for Book Club - two months after reading Larry McMurtry's "The Last Picture Show" - "Cimarron" was written in 1929, thus the lack of cover art here in GoodReads!

I found the old west romp about the Oklahoma land rush quite a hoot - better reading than I expected and it shows in the fact that I finished it in just half a month - quicker than most books I read. This is a larger-than-life story, a tall tale...as demonstrated by the Foreword:

"Only the more fantastic and improbably events contained in this book are true." "There is no city of Osage, Oklahoma. It is a composite of, perhaps, five existent Oklahoma cities. The Kid is not meant to be the notorious Billy the Kid of an earlier day. There was no Yancey Cravat--he is a blending of a number of dashing Oklahoma figures of a past and present day. There is no Sabra Cravat, but she exists in a score of bright-eye, white-haired, intensely interesting women of sixty-five or thereabouts who told me many strange things as we talked and rocked on an Oklahoma front porch (tree-shaded now). Anything can have happened in Oklahoma. Practically everything has."

If I had to describe this book in just one word, it would be "colorful"!

I thoroughly enjoyed the descriptions of the hard life, Sabra's grit, and all the archaic and intriguing vocabulary...much of it about the types of clothing and fabrics the women wore. Yancey's head was dolichocephalic - he was long-headed!

Some passages were poetic, others were downright unexpected and memorable...like the dreadful & remorseless way that Black Isaiah, Anita Red Feather and her baby were killed in the desert.

As the book wound down, Edna Ferber rushed forward like Dixie Lee on horseback, zipping quickly through generations and losing focus, but still I give this a solid 4 for its high adventure and sense of place & time. I can envision revisiting it whenever I'm looking for some unexpected antics & colorful speech, and I'm glad it was chosen for book club.

[Elderberrywine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do love me some Edna Ferber. The thing about her books is that they always read like big Technicolor epic movies, way before such a thing existed. They certainly didn’t in 1929, when this was published. But so many have been turned into such, like this book (twice, first time winning one of the first Best Picture Academy Awards), Show Boat, Giant, and Saratoga Trunk, to name a few.

So our hero, Yancy Cravat, is a hot bull-headed force of nature. Think Clark Gable in his prime. He is an eloquent lawyer, a newspaper publisher, and an ace shot. What is not to like? He swans into 1880s Wichita Kansas, and sweeps lovely Sabra Venable, daughter of well-bred Southern aristocracy, off her feet. And in no time, she is married against her family’s will, the Oklahoma Land Rush is on, and they are looking for their own bit of land. But it turns out to not happen, because Yancy, ever the gentleman, unknowingly allows the quick-witted and duplicitous Dixie Lee to snatch the property away from him.

But the worst sin Yancy commits in Sabra’s eyes is that he considers the indigenous people of Oklahoma as admirable and worthy of full citizenship, and what’s more, has a newspaper to use as a bully pulpit. Sabra has the opposite view, and throws herself instead into civic improvements of the newborn Osage, Oklahoma. She ends up taking over the paper when Yancy, as is his wont, pulls a runner for awhile. But when he comes back, it’s his voice again. And Dixie pits herself against Sabra when she returns to Osage in full glory as the madam of the town’s best whorehouse. Drama galore!

Considering the publishing date of this book, I would imagine that a considerable portion of the readers were absolutely on Sabra’s side, who is portrayed as hardworking and trying her level best to do what’s right.. But Ferber definitely wasn’t.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jag ska börja med en brasklapp: språket i den här 30-talsboken var stundtals knepigt för mig. När det är så många ord som man inte har hört förut så hindrar det så klart flytet i läsningen. Hade jag läst boken på svenska så tror jag att jag hade kunnat ge den en fyra.

Med det sagt så är det flera gånger jag har stannat upp i läsningen på en fin eller rolig formulering!

Sydstatsdottern Sabra Cravat flyttar med sin karismatiske man Yancey Cravat till Oklahoma Territory, där det efter 1889 års Land Run (där regeringen delade ut mark enligt först till kvarn-principen) har växt upp provisoriska städer. För Sabra är det en stor omställning och hon lider av värmen, dammet och inte minst laglösheten. Dessutom avskyr hon indianer. Yancey bryr sig inte så mycket om vad hon tycker, utan kör sitt eget race.

Yancey startar en tidning i stan, som Sabra sedan får driva när han snabbt tröttnar och drar vidare till nästa grej, oftast utan att fråga henne. Båda är osympatiska på sitt vis, men jag känner ändå mer för Sabra, vilket är lite knepigt när Yancey är den vältaliga advokaten som är indianernas och de utsattas förkämpe, och hon den som kämpar för sin egen bild av civilisation, med sociala regler och hierarkier och ordning och reda.

Det är en intressant och spännande bild av vilda västern i slutet på 1800-talet, hur samhällena växte fram. I förordet till boken skriver Edna Ferber att karaktärer och händelser baseras på verkliga karaktärer och händelser, men att många av händelserna inte kom med för att de är för märkliga och fantastiska för att låta verkliga. 😁