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Old Jules
Recreates the life of a Swiss-born Nebraska homesteader, while reflecting on the character of the people who shaped the American nation
438 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1935
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About the author
Mari Sandoz
59 books49 followersMari Susette Sandoz (May 11, 1896 – March 10, 1966) was a novelist, biographer, lecturer, and teacher. She was one of Nebraska's foremost writers, and wrote extensively about pioneer life and the Plains Indians.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews
January 6, 2025
Well written but very hard to slog through. It’s ostensibly an homage to the author’s father—a horrible father I might add, although she evidently didn’t see it quite that way. He was larger than life, impressed many who knew him and had some friends in high places,
Jules Ami Sandoz came from Switzerland to the United States in the early 1880s as an already angry young man fleeing from his father and disappointments, feeling put upon and persecuted. His life in the far western Nebraska panhandle didn’t improve his disposition. He continued to bring other immigrants to this area knowing it wasn’t particularly suited to farming. It’s a dismal story of failure, abuse of Native Americans, suicide, giving up dreams, bloody feuds with neighbors, cattlemen, sheep men and thieves.
Jules must have had a powerful personality because he drew people to him. A sad series of wives were lost to abuse and neglect. His daughter, Mari, details his viscousness towards her mother, her siblings and herself. She was beaten for crying as a three month old. If this sounds like more than you can take, don’t read this book.
Old Jules is an interesting history of the time and place, some of which might have been lost had Mari not decided to take up her dad’s story. She seemed to think this kind of cantankerous, cruel person was needed to open the unsettled West. I feel her admiration is more than a little misplaced. She should have written a biography of her long suffering mother. Her mother’s kind settled the West.
Jules Ami Sandoz came from Switzerland to the United States in the early 1880s as an already angry young man fleeing from his father and disappointments, feeling put upon and persecuted. His life in the far western Nebraska panhandle didn’t improve his disposition. He continued to bring other immigrants to this area knowing it wasn’t particularly suited to farming. It’s a dismal story of failure, abuse of Native Americans, suicide, giving up dreams, bloody feuds with neighbors, cattlemen, sheep men and thieves.
Jules must have had a powerful personality because he drew people to him. A sad series of wives were lost to abuse and neglect. His daughter, Mari, details his viscousness towards her mother, her siblings and herself. She was beaten for crying as a three month old. If this sounds like more than you can take, don’t read this book.
Old Jules is an interesting history of the time and place, some of which might have been lost had Mari not decided to take up her dad’s story. She seemed to think this kind of cantankerous, cruel person was needed to open the unsettled West. I feel her admiration is more than a little misplaced. She should have written a biography of her long suffering mother. Her mother’s kind settled the West.
May 7, 2013
Little House on the Prairie, this ain't. It's an excellent way to shatter any illusions that pioneer life was one big locavore barnraising festooned with handworked finery and old-fashioned virtue.
Mari Sandoz methodically researched (and was able to provide lots of primary sources, newspaper clippings and court records to buttress) the life of her father, the titular Old Jules.
They guy was a piece of work. The book follows the arc of his life as a medical student in Switzerland when he emigrates to the Nebraska sandhills. His success as a settler was due to his willingness to turn a gun on anyone who threatened his property or power. The guy went through three wives before finally settling down with Mary (the author's mother) who poured her life into his. Removed from any of his upper-class European social constraints, Old Jules rules his fiefdom in the sandhills with impunity. He's always clashing with cattlemen, government, other immigrants, wives, nature, snakes, etc. He really lived his life like everybody was out to get him, and he worked his family and his land tirelessly to build his empire. He used up anything and anyone that was at his command.
The writing is great. Great dialogue, vivid texture, great pacing. Not to spoil anything, but when Old Jules gets snakebit out in the back of beyond he shoots off the venomous tissue before making his eight-year-old Marie drive hell for leather across the sandhills for help with him bouncing around in the buggy drifting in and out of consciousness.
There are some great vignettes of pioneer life: mail order brides, wars over the barbed wire, friendships formed with the Ogalala, snake bites, hornswoggling a post office into the farm, plum planting, murder, neighbors moved to the asylum and blizzards. The whole book makes you think that rather than dour, virtuous hard workers that maybe a good bit of the American heritage can be attributed to socially maladjusted gun-toting megalomaniacs.
Mari Sandoz methodically researched (and was able to provide lots of primary sources, newspaper clippings and court records to buttress) the life of her father, the titular Old Jules.
They guy was a piece of work. The book follows the arc of his life as a medical student in Switzerland when he emigrates to the Nebraska sandhills. His success as a settler was due to his willingness to turn a gun on anyone who threatened his property or power. The guy went through three wives before finally settling down with Mary (the author's mother) who poured her life into his. Removed from any of his upper-class European social constraints, Old Jules rules his fiefdom in the sandhills with impunity. He's always clashing with cattlemen, government, other immigrants, wives, nature, snakes, etc. He really lived his life like everybody was out to get him, and he worked his family and his land tirelessly to build his empire. He used up anything and anyone that was at his command.
The writing is great. Great dialogue, vivid texture, great pacing. Not to spoil anything, but when Old Jules gets snakebit out in the back of beyond he shoots off the venomous tissue before making his eight-year-old Marie drive hell for leather across the sandhills for help with him bouncing around in the buggy drifting in and out of consciousness.
There are some great vignettes of pioneer life: mail order brides, wars over the barbed wire, friendships formed with the Ogalala, snake bites, hornswoggling a post office into the farm, plum planting, murder, neighbors moved to the asylum and blizzards. The whole book makes you think that rather than dour, virtuous hard workers that maybe a good bit of the American heritage can be attributed to socially maladjusted gun-toting megalomaniacs.
November 10, 2015
Old Jules is a biography of an American pioneer, written by his daughter Mari and published in 1937. Mari Sandoz is an extraordinary figure in American letters and this, her first book, is a great book. I want to say it is one of the greatest books written about the American west, but I haven’t read that many so I won’t make the claim. I will say it is one of the greatest books I’ve read about a place.
“At the potash towns the old plants loomed gaunt, fire-stripped, the boilers and pipings red-rusted, the large chimneys tumbled down to piles of brick. The tar-paper shacks were gone, the towns dead. On all sides the hills pushed in.”
The place is the Sand Hills of Nebraska and the time is from the 1880-1928, the year in which Old Jules dies. The sweep is epic, as it should be, but the prose is the thing. Sandoz achieves several things seemingly without effort. She describes the sights, the smells, the attitude of place, of nature, people and the ephemeral things the people build against a relentlessly fickle environment, an environment hostile to permanence. She tells and retells stories she heard as a child, about the ordinary adventures of humans caught in a drama only partly of their making, a drama driven by greed and dreams and contradictory impulses: rapes, murders, suicides, corruption, yes; but also work, fencing, planting orchards, selecting ground, establishing institutions such as post offices, courts and police; and marriage, divorce, madness, adultery; the making of clothes, shoes, buildings, and the forging of weapons and tools; and the celebrations, weddings, funerals and Sunday dinners and dances of life on the frontier. History happens meanwhile, the indigenous Cheyenne and Sioux come and go, the wild game disappears, the railroad and towns arrive, the land is no longer free and then automobiles and telephones and finally radio and airplanes. Sandoz is a master of narrative and of language, for she captures the speech rhythms and phrases of her settlers, almost all of whom are immigrants: Polish, German, French or like her father, Swiss. Sandoz didn’t speak English until she went to school, against Old Jules’ wishes, at the age of 8. She lived in a linguistic environment that was French and German and, likely (according to Sandoz scholar, Richard Voorhees), Cheyenne and Sioux. Time passes as effortlessly as a gentle stream in this book. Change is its theme, and yet change happens, time passes, in the organic, elemental way of life, sometimes eruptive, explosive but mostly at the pace of erosion.
Old Jules was born in Switzerland in the 1850s to a bourgeois family. When his father tries to clip his wings the impulsive Jules quits medical school and takes off for America. He ends up as a freeholder in the panhandle of Nebraska. Here his obsessions unfold. Jules is a violent, abusive, paranoid and angry man with a tyrannical will for dominance. He marries 4 times, driving one wife insane. He rarely bathes, shoots a gun with deadly accuracy, and lives in filth, among books he orders from the government and abroad. He fights with everyone and whips and beats his children and wife Mary. He is a torrent, a walking storm. His dream, his obsession, is to settle the land which he has loved since first seeing it. He is a prophet. He knows good weather will succeed draught. He knows mild winters will punctuate the thankless freezing blizzards of the worst years. He develops seeds and plants that are drought tolerant (he is known by the end as the Burbank of the upper Plains). He will do anything to attract settlers, and is joined by his brothers, and his wife’s family, seduced to the harsh land by Jules’ charm and vision. By the turn of the century he is a legend, but his restless, reckless pursuit of sensation doesn’t desert him until near the end when he begins to drink and take morphine for chronic pain. By then his family seems to have forgiven him. I say seems because there is a current of anger that runs through this book that perhaps is his greatest gift to his daughter Mari. She does not in any way idealize this man, she simply presents him as a force few can resist or hide from. When she wins a short story contest in the late twenties he sends her a letter saying, “You know I consider artists and writers the maggots of society.”
“At the potash towns the old plants loomed gaunt, fire-stripped, the boilers and pipings red-rusted, the large chimneys tumbled down to piles of brick. The tar-paper shacks were gone, the towns dead. On all sides the hills pushed in.”
The place is the Sand Hills of Nebraska and the time is from the 1880-1928, the year in which Old Jules dies. The sweep is epic, as it should be, but the prose is the thing. Sandoz achieves several things seemingly without effort. She describes the sights, the smells, the attitude of place, of nature, people and the ephemeral things the people build against a relentlessly fickle environment, an environment hostile to permanence. She tells and retells stories she heard as a child, about the ordinary adventures of humans caught in a drama only partly of their making, a drama driven by greed and dreams and contradictory impulses: rapes, murders, suicides, corruption, yes; but also work, fencing, planting orchards, selecting ground, establishing institutions such as post offices, courts and police; and marriage, divorce, madness, adultery; the making of clothes, shoes, buildings, and the forging of weapons and tools; and the celebrations, weddings, funerals and Sunday dinners and dances of life on the frontier. History happens meanwhile, the indigenous Cheyenne and Sioux come and go, the wild game disappears, the railroad and towns arrive, the land is no longer free and then automobiles and telephones and finally radio and airplanes. Sandoz is a master of narrative and of language, for she captures the speech rhythms and phrases of her settlers, almost all of whom are immigrants: Polish, German, French or like her father, Swiss. Sandoz didn’t speak English until she went to school, against Old Jules’ wishes, at the age of 8. She lived in a linguistic environment that was French and German and, likely (according to Sandoz scholar, Richard Voorhees), Cheyenne and Sioux. Time passes as effortlessly as a gentle stream in this book. Change is its theme, and yet change happens, time passes, in the organic, elemental way of life, sometimes eruptive, explosive but mostly at the pace of erosion.
Old Jules was born in Switzerland in the 1850s to a bourgeois family. When his father tries to clip his wings the impulsive Jules quits medical school and takes off for America. He ends up as a freeholder in the panhandle of Nebraska. Here his obsessions unfold. Jules is a violent, abusive, paranoid and angry man with a tyrannical will for dominance. He marries 4 times, driving one wife insane. He rarely bathes, shoots a gun with deadly accuracy, and lives in filth, among books he orders from the government and abroad. He fights with everyone and whips and beats his children and wife Mary. He is a torrent, a walking storm. His dream, his obsession, is to settle the land which he has loved since first seeing it. He is a prophet. He knows good weather will succeed draught. He knows mild winters will punctuate the thankless freezing blizzards of the worst years. He develops seeds and plants that are drought tolerant (he is known by the end as the Burbank of the upper Plains). He will do anything to attract settlers, and is joined by his brothers, and his wife’s family, seduced to the harsh land by Jules’ charm and vision. By the turn of the century he is a legend, but his restless, reckless pursuit of sensation doesn’t desert him until near the end when he begins to drink and take morphine for chronic pain. By then his family seems to have forgiven him. I say seems because there is a current of anger that runs through this book that perhaps is his greatest gift to his daughter Mari. She does not in any way idealize this man, she simply presents him as a force few can resist or hide from. When she wins a short story contest in the late twenties he sends her a letter saying, “You know I consider artists and writers the maggots of society.”
May 28, 2014
The story of Jules, told by his oldest daughter, is described in q NYT review as a realistic and rare biography leaving the reader feeling he has 'read the history of all pioneering." I sincerely hope not. Though Jules made many positive contributions to the early settlement of Nebraska he was more than a disagreeable person; physical violence with his wife and six little children was his right, he thought. I found him disgusting. He was esteemed for his skills but hated by those who knew him. I do not believe that he portrays the average early settler. His daughter seems to be defending a father who was emotionally and physically cruel as do many abused children.
This quote gives pause for thought: "If you look into history you will find that vision is always accompanied by a degree of thoughtlessness, impatience, and even intolerance for others."
The author herself suggested that the book was written "for a limited audience, people who would understand how truly it portrays the physical and cultural heritages of the prairie homesteading era."
This quote gives pause for thought: "If you look into history you will find that vision is always accompanied by a degree of thoughtlessness, impatience, and even intolerance for others."
The author herself suggested that the book was written "for a limited audience, people who would understand how truly it portrays the physical and cultural heritages of the prairie homesteading era."
April 6, 2012
The book begins in 1884 when Jules Sandoz is 22. He is a recently arrived immigrant from Switzerland, a bright, educated young man who wants to move to the American frontier and build up the country. He hopes his Swiss sweetheart Rosalie will join him.
**Some minor spoilers below**
In this masterful account of her father's life, Mari Sandoz records the next fifty years of life in the panhandle of Nebraska, in the far northwest of the state in the sandhills, the high country, the area in close proximity to the Indian wars that were closing as Old Jules arrives (he is an eyewitness to the Wounded Knee massacare site the next day when it was still strewn with the bodies of Native women and children).
As you can imagine, the life is exceedingly difficult, and we read of many settlers who couldn't take it -- left, went insane, committed suicide. Jules is constantly luring more settlers to the area, locating them on homesteads, giving advice, learning what crops will grow in the difficult region. He fights ranchers, the government, his fellow settlers (even old friends). He has an early accident that almost kills him and is nursed back to health (though he remains a cripple) by the later famous Dr. Walter Reed.
He is not a lovable character. One is captivated by him, but one does not like him. The author-daughter doesn't even seem to. She respects and admires him, clearly, but she doesn't seem to like him. He beats his wives (there are four -- Rosalie never comes). He beats his children, especially if they cry too much as infants. He erupts into rages, even at old friends. He doesn't do much of the work himself, treats his family as the help. You are reminded of a VERY different time. Much of what he does would be criminal today, though he fought the criminal element of his day.
Mari Sandoz tells the story in broad strokes, where those are needed, and in great detail, where that is required. The book never bogs down, and it never goes too quickly. The pacing is perfect.
Her writing style is vivid. Spare in the great American tradition, but alert to detail and the proper use of descriptives. She has a great grasp of the little vignette that reveals much.
It is an entertaining and informative read, and I highly recommend it.
**Some minor spoilers below**
In this masterful account of her father's life, Mari Sandoz records the next fifty years of life in the panhandle of Nebraska, in the far northwest of the state in the sandhills, the high country, the area in close proximity to the Indian wars that were closing as Old Jules arrives (he is an eyewitness to the Wounded Knee massacare site the next day when it was still strewn with the bodies of Native women and children).
As you can imagine, the life is exceedingly difficult, and we read of many settlers who couldn't take it -- left, went insane, committed suicide. Jules is constantly luring more settlers to the area, locating them on homesteads, giving advice, learning what crops will grow in the difficult region. He fights ranchers, the government, his fellow settlers (even old friends). He has an early accident that almost kills him and is nursed back to health (though he remains a cripple) by the later famous Dr. Walter Reed.
He is not a lovable character. One is captivated by him, but one does not like him. The author-daughter doesn't even seem to. She respects and admires him, clearly, but she doesn't seem to like him. He beats his wives (there are four -- Rosalie never comes). He beats his children, especially if they cry too much as infants. He erupts into rages, even at old friends. He doesn't do much of the work himself, treats his family as the help. You are reminded of a VERY different time. Much of what he does would be criminal today, though he fought the criminal element of his day.
Mari Sandoz tells the story in broad strokes, where those are needed, and in great detail, where that is required. The book never bogs down, and it never goes too quickly. The pacing is perfect.
Her writing style is vivid. Spare in the great American tradition, but alert to detail and the proper use of descriptives. She has a great grasp of the little vignette that reveals much.
It is an entertaining and informative read, and I highly recommend it.
December 31, 2023
This took me a long while to read, but the effort paid off. I have known men like Jules Sandoz. Charming, big-talking, and so self-centered that they warp reality, bending the world to serve them.
Mari Sandoz pulls no punches in this biography of her father: he was a bad man. He abused those under his power, lied and cheated to get his way, and picked fights with everyone he knew. He lavished generosity on those he thought he could use while forcing his family to bear the costs of his largess. He built himself up while tearing down everyone around him.
And yet, people followed him. Many did. Despite his childish greed for attention and gratification, Old Jules was a cornerstone of his frontier community. Citizens turned to him to solve their problems, and he often did so. While meticulously torturing his wife and children and burning down the dreams of everyone close to him, he helped keep a community together in the face of a brutal environment and the merciless attacks of big businesses that killed settlers and burned them out of their homes without consequence.
Old Jules had a dream: that the tough land of the western Plains could be an Eden for those who managed to settle there. He pursued that dream relentlessly, and arguably improved the lives of many. That he destroyed the lives of so many people close to him seems to have completely passed his notice, even to his dying breath.
Mari Sandoz pulls no punches in this biography of her father: he was a bad man. He abused those under his power, lied and cheated to get his way, and picked fights with everyone he knew. He lavished generosity on those he thought he could use while forcing his family to bear the costs of his largess. He built himself up while tearing down everyone around him.
And yet, people followed him. Many did. Despite his childish greed for attention and gratification, Old Jules was a cornerstone of his frontier community. Citizens turned to him to solve their problems, and he often did so. While meticulously torturing his wife and children and burning down the dreams of everyone close to him, he helped keep a community together in the face of a brutal environment and the merciless attacks of big businesses that killed settlers and burned them out of their homes without consequence.
Old Jules had a dream: that the tough land of the western Plains could be an Eden for those who managed to settle there. He pursued that dream relentlessly, and arguably improved the lives of many. That he destroyed the lives of so many people close to him seems to have completely passed his notice, even to his dying breath.
March 10, 2019
I gave this four stars because of the strong sense of place, time, and personalities, but I'd give it a three for the writing. Sandoz mentions so many people, but doesn't always introduce them at the time they're first mentioned. Then, the person may vanish from the story for several chapters and reappear briefly. For a first time reader, I suggest not trying to keep straight all of these people. I also wish that Mari Sandoz hadn't been discouraged from including much about her own story. I would have liked to hear more of her own voice.
Overall, this book will be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about the settling of the west. I will read this again in a few years. (I liked the book, but I probably wouldn't have liked Jules.)
Overall, this book will be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about the settling of the west. I will read this again in a few years. (I liked the book, but I probably wouldn't have liked Jules.)
April 14, 2020
Nice story of settling Nebraska.
July 14, 2019
“Old Jules” is a biography of Jules Sandoz written by his oldest daughter, Mari, who, so it seems, is a premier chronicler of the history of Nebraska and to a large degree, Middle America in general. I did not think the writing per se was good (this happened, then this happened, then this happened and on and on, incident after incident interspersed with lengthy scene descriptions at the start of several chapters, mainly earl in the book but little, if any, context, or reflection). Based on the writing, I’d have given it one star. But the subject in general and the “protagonist” in particular are so powerful enough (easily 5+ stars) to pull the overall rating up.
“Old Jules” overlaps settings with Willa Cather’s fiction, but as a biography, “Old Jules” is more sweeping. Both show how and why Middle America is what it is today and how wrong, and utterly stupid, HRC was, in 2016, to utter that “basket of deplorables” nonsense.
If I can find a single word to describe Jules, it would be “builder.” His farming abilities, potentially great early on, were quickly checked by an accident that permanently weakened one leg (which would have been amputated had he not bullied the surgeon into letting him keep it attached). But as a “locator” (helping settlers find properties), on-and-off postmaster (depending who he alternately impressed and pissed off to get post office designations given to and taken away from him), community organizer, horticulture expert, fill-in doctor, political advocate, Jules was a titan of his time. His hygiene was dreadful and his temper was fierce (with his family, including the author, often but not exclusively in the line of fire). But he was still looked upon and respected as a leader.
Reading this book depicts, in an organic rather than didactic way, a relationship between the individual and government that HRC did not understand in 2016 and which I expect none of the 2020 initial slate of democratic presidential candidates gets. And no, it’s not a simplistic matter of libertarian no-government versus socialism. Jules and those around him often combined characteristics of both. What we see here is enormous individual effort, innovation and enterprise co-existing with an often pleading and desperate desire for a strong government that would protect their rights against outsiders including eastern capitalists and banks who, often acting illegally, sought to profit at their expense. And having read this, now, for the first time in my life, I’m starting to understand the gun culture and the NRA which I’m staring to see more as outdated than despicable per se. Back in Jules’ time, the government was often unable or unwilling to do what it was supposed to have done, so much of what Jules and his peers built had to depend more on marksmanship than speechmaking or, nowadays, tweeting.
In sum, the writing is neither pleasant nor polished and it can become impossible, after a while, to keep the sequence of individual incidents distinct from one another. But if tune into the big-picture story here, this is a very significant work that should be much more widely read outside its home region.
“Old Jules” overlaps settings with Willa Cather’s fiction, but as a biography, “Old Jules” is more sweeping. Both show how and why Middle America is what it is today and how wrong, and utterly stupid, HRC was, in 2016, to utter that “basket of deplorables” nonsense.
If I can find a single word to describe Jules, it would be “builder.” His farming abilities, potentially great early on, were quickly checked by an accident that permanently weakened one leg (which would have been amputated had he not bullied the surgeon into letting him keep it attached). But as a “locator” (helping settlers find properties), on-and-off postmaster (depending who he alternately impressed and pissed off to get post office designations given to and taken away from him), community organizer, horticulture expert, fill-in doctor, political advocate, Jules was a titan of his time. His hygiene was dreadful and his temper was fierce (with his family, including the author, often but not exclusively in the line of fire). But he was still looked upon and respected as a leader.
Reading this book depicts, in an organic rather than didactic way, a relationship between the individual and government that HRC did not understand in 2016 and which I expect none of the 2020 initial slate of democratic presidential candidates gets. And no, it’s not a simplistic matter of libertarian no-government versus socialism. Jules and those around him often combined characteristics of both. What we see here is enormous individual effort, innovation and enterprise co-existing with an often pleading and desperate desire for a strong government that would protect their rights against outsiders including eastern capitalists and banks who, often acting illegally, sought to profit at their expense. And having read this, now, for the first time in my life, I’m starting to understand the gun culture and the NRA which I’m staring to see more as outdated than despicable per se. Back in Jules’ time, the government was often unable or unwilling to do what it was supposed to have done, so much of what Jules and his peers built had to depend more on marksmanship than speechmaking or, nowadays, tweeting.
In sum, the writing is neither pleasant nor polished and it can become impossible, after a while, to keep the sequence of individual incidents distinct from one another. But if tune into the big-picture story here, this is a very significant work that should be much more widely read outside its home region.
October 1, 2020
Not exactly Little House on the Prairie.
October 4, 2021
Old Jules by Mari Sandoz (Hastings House 1965) (originally 1935) (Biography) (3578).
Author Mari Sandoz has written a biography of her father Jules, an immigrant who was a pioneer Nebraskan in the late 1880’s. Many years after his death, the author wrote the stories that, as a child, she had overheard him tell his friends by the light of the fireplace late in the evening. These were stories of life on the hardscrabble frontier, of sod houses, natives, and the paucity of single women available for the immigrant bachelor farmers.
Readers best not mistake this tale for another Little House on the Prairie. This is not a tale of a loving family working together to survive on the frontier. This is a tale of blood, of feuds, of wolves and grizzly bears, of lynchings, and of range wars, where self-reliance and a repeating rifle were the true measures of a man.
On the whole, I found Mari Sandoz’ writing style to be too simplistic for my taste. Most of her sentences are simple and short declaratory statements of six words or less. The dialogue she has imagined is even more stilted; it often sounded cringe-inducing to this reader’s ear.
Old Jules reminds me of Little Big Man but without the humor and insight.
I would commend this story to Nebraskans or to those particularly interested in the frontier.
My rating: 6/10, finished 10/4/21 (3578).
January 9, 2018
Great imagery and of course characters. So Depressing at times I can’t really say I “enjoyed” it, but it’s quite a tale. I thought I had read it many years ago, but it didn’t seem at all familiar.
September 12, 2025
I really enjoyed learning about the early days of Nebraska's settlement by immigrants. But I never became invested in the family, and the story is slow and sometimes actively unpleasant.
October 13, 2015
This classic, a testament to the men and women who settled the west, is amazing in so many ways. It had a slow start, and I thought it was a little dry at first. But then I became entwined in the lives of the "characters" and was carried along on the waves of this wonderful volume. The "characters" are real...Mari Sandoz's own family, and particularly her father Jules. He was a truly complex person: a visionary, who wanted the west to be a place where people could come and live their lives in freedom and prosperity, who never looked at money as the result of his tireless efforts to locate land for others; a self-taught horticulturalist who experimented in grafting and grew an orchard of fruit trees that benefitted his entire area; a man who wanted to be the postmaster of his area, and little more, who believed in reading and in writing letters to Washington to get things done. And yet he was also a terrible misogynist, abusive and degrading to his children, who left the hard work of his place to his wife and children while he went out to hunt, and who got into scrape after scrape with his neighbors, particularly ranchers, who he felt had no right to be there. The complexity of his personality made me hate him in one way, and be fascinated by and even care about him in others. I was amazed that Mari wanted to write this first book of many about her father, after all they went through as she was growing up. And yet she did, and wrote an incredible testament to the difficulties of the homesteading life, and the life of people in this hard time. It is beautifully written, and greatly detailed and will stand as a classic always, though she is better known for Cheyenne Autumn and other books about the west. I am so happy that I read it for nothing in life is simple...it is all multi-faceted. This was a great reminder.
February 2, 2024
This was a really interesting book. The author, Mari Sandoz, is the daughter of Old Jules. Mari only had an 8th grade education, but was a veracious reader. In my opinion her writing is unique. I found it challenging to read/understand for the first 50 pages or so. It is well worth struggling through the first one hundred pages. I believe her unique writing style stems from her lack luster prairie schoolhouse education and her love of reading. She was able to pass the teaching examination for the state of Nebraska, in spite of her lack of a highschool diploma. She worked as a teacher in a one room school house after passing. Later she would go on to be a struggling writer in Lincoln, Nebraska. She eventually found success with the post humous biography of her father.
This book is a collection of tales. Tales based in reality. In 1884 Jules Sandoz arrives in Valentine, NE. He establishes his own homestead along the Niobrara and begins cultivating crops and establishing an orchard. This book shows you the adventure, cruelty, desperation, and isolation these homesteaders experienced. When reading the book you learn motifs of the great plains. You meet Oglalas, paranoid religious zealots, hopeful immigrants, corrupt cattlemen, and wandering sheepmen.
I believe this book serves as a valuable anthropological resource. The majority of homesteaders stories were lost as they abandoned their claims. As those settlers passed, so to did there tales. This story preserves these valuable glimpses into the past. While these stories may not be 100 percent true, they are based in fact. They reflect the experiences of those who settled the plains. If you enjoy history, drama, violence, and complicated characters than you will like this book.
This book is a collection of tales. Tales based in reality. In 1884 Jules Sandoz arrives in Valentine, NE. He establishes his own homestead along the Niobrara and begins cultivating crops and establishing an orchard. This book shows you the adventure, cruelty, desperation, and isolation these homesteaders experienced. When reading the book you learn motifs of the great plains. You meet Oglalas, paranoid religious zealots, hopeful immigrants, corrupt cattlemen, and wandering sheepmen.
I believe this book serves as a valuable anthropological resource. The majority of homesteaders stories were lost as they abandoned their claims. As those settlers passed, so to did there tales. This story preserves these valuable glimpses into the past. While these stories may not be 100 percent true, they are based in fact. They reflect the experiences of those who settled the plains. If you enjoy history, drama, violence, and complicated characters than you will like this book.
August 7, 2017
Old Jules was a mean son of a bitch.
He wasn't much of a husband or father. He ended up having four wives. He treated his wives barely better than he treated his stock. His idea of a wife was a worker meant to breed other workers.
Despite his failings, he was a tough hombre. He was an excellent marksman, gunsmith and hunter. He was a friend to the defeated Sioux. He had a knack for growing fruit trees in the terribly dry and rough region of the Nebraska Sand hills. He had a strange affinity for botany and agriculture. Like any deep thinking man worth his salt, he had no use for religion or the sky pilots religion spawned.
He dealt with greedy cattlemen and defended the hard working poor. He has a man of letters and wrote to anyone who had a sympathetic ear for the settlers plight and the vermin that took advantage of them. He was feared and respected, he was laughed at and then revered. He stayed true to what he believed in and seldom blanched in the face of extreme hardship. He was a dichotomy; as mean as he was, he was also very generous. He cussed, told dirty stories, spit in the house and constantly cleaned and smoked his cob pipe - a rifle or shotgun always close at hand.
I am surprised that I have not read this prior to now.
A unique bit of history about an ornery old Swiss immigrant, his family and the sad area they helped settle.
He wasn't much of a husband or father. He ended up having four wives. He treated his wives barely better than he treated his stock. His idea of a wife was a worker meant to breed other workers.
Despite his failings, he was a tough hombre. He was an excellent marksman, gunsmith and hunter. He was a friend to the defeated Sioux. He had a knack for growing fruit trees in the terribly dry and rough region of the Nebraska Sand hills. He had a strange affinity for botany and agriculture. Like any deep thinking man worth his salt, he had no use for religion or the sky pilots religion spawned.
He dealt with greedy cattlemen and defended the hard working poor. He has a man of letters and wrote to anyone who had a sympathetic ear for the settlers plight and the vermin that took advantage of them. He was feared and respected, he was laughed at and then revered. He stayed true to what he believed in and seldom blanched in the face of extreme hardship. He was a dichotomy; as mean as he was, he was also very generous. He cussed, told dirty stories, spit in the house and constantly cleaned and smoked his cob pipe - a rifle or shotgun always close at hand.
I am surprised that I have not read this prior to now.
A unique bit of history about an ornery old Swiss immigrant, his family and the sad area they helped settle.
May 31, 2023
For a bit over 400 pages (the 1985 University of Nebraska Press 50th anniversary edition), you will despise Jules for his cruelty, his misogyny, and his downright nastiness. For the last ten pages, you will cry as his daughter writes about his last days.
To be fair, Jules Sandoz was a bright Swiss fellow studying to be a doctor. But wanderlust caught him, he came to America, married several times, had six children, but stuck it out on the prairie. He had a good side: charismatic, a good speaker, a master at agriculture, and helpful to other settlers. But he wasn't a particularly nice fellow, to put it kindly: mean to his wives and his children. Smart but insensitive, is that fair?
You think you have it tough? Try the 1880's west of the 100th meridian in western Nebraska. Mari (Marie in the book) Sandoz paints an incredible word picture of the struggles of a group of people, mostly immigrants, some strong, some weak, but all caught up in crops, cows, cold, heat, hail, snow, drought, prairie fires, fights, small successes, large failures, and one disappointment after another.
Read and be impressed.
To be fair, Jules Sandoz was a bright Swiss fellow studying to be a doctor. But wanderlust caught him, he came to America, married several times, had six children, but stuck it out on the prairie. He had a good side: charismatic, a good speaker, a master at agriculture, and helpful to other settlers. But he wasn't a particularly nice fellow, to put it kindly: mean to his wives and his children. Smart but insensitive, is that fair?
You think you have it tough? Try the 1880's west of the 100th meridian in western Nebraska. Mari (Marie in the book) Sandoz paints an incredible word picture of the struggles of a group of people, mostly immigrants, some strong, some weak, but all caught up in crops, cows, cold, heat, hail, snow, drought, prairie fires, fights, small successes, large failures, and one disappointment after another.
Read and be impressed.
August 13, 2015
A biography of author Mari Sandoz' father, a Swiss immigrant who helped settle Nebraska in the late 1800s.
Definitely a warts-and-all picture, and with a lot of warts. Sandoz, who hated her father for years, spent a long time writing, re-writing, and coming to terms with him. The result gives, I think, a very good picture not just of the early settlement of the West, but of a class of people who made for successful pioneers -- stubborn, too proud to admit failure, and unable to "play well with others".
Terrific writing, great material. Certainly on my list of best books I've ever read. Not one to put you in a happy mood, though.
Definitely a warts-and-all picture, and with a lot of warts. Sandoz, who hated her father for years, spent a long time writing, re-writing, and coming to terms with him. The result gives, I think, a very good picture not just of the early settlement of the West, but of a class of people who made for successful pioneers -- stubborn, too proud to admit failure, and unable to "play well with others".
Terrific writing, great material. Certainly on my list of best books I've ever read. Not one to put you in a happy mood, though.
March 18, 2009
I had to read this for a boring history course in college. And the book was boring, boring, boring.
March 5, 2022
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.
November 5, 2025
This is a detailed, plodding book through a man’s life in late 1800s Plains of America (northern Nebraska).
An educated man from Switzerland comes to america for opportunity and to in some ways get away from his family. A lot of details about the day today rough life, the environment the weather the difficult conditions the battles between the different types of people the Native Americans the animals. It really captures the mood very well. The guy was kind of a jerk but-generally have a lot of care and concern for where he lived and what he was trying to protect and preserve. He was smart, more educated than a lot of of the people he was around.
He was able to prosper in extremely difficult conditions, by researching and using government information about crops, low water farming, irrigation things like that.
He wasn’t the easiest man to live with obviously, he went through quite a few women. It’s pretty rough and tumble. I recommend it for anyone looking for a picture of life on the plains. In the earlier days of the country.
I plan to read more of his daughter’s books that are primarily about that region which I don’t know a lot about … this book was written by his daughter.
An educated man from Switzerland comes to america for opportunity and to in some ways get away from his family. A lot of details about the day today rough life, the environment the weather the difficult conditions the battles between the different types of people the Native Americans the animals. It really captures the mood very well. The guy was kind of a jerk but-generally have a lot of care and concern for where he lived and what he was trying to protect and preserve. He was smart, more educated than a lot of of the people he was around.
He was able to prosper in extremely difficult conditions, by researching and using government information about crops, low water farming, irrigation things like that.
He wasn’t the easiest man to live with obviously, he went through quite a few women. It’s pretty rough and tumble. I recommend it for anyone looking for a picture of life on the plains. In the earlier days of the country.
I plan to read more of his daughter’s books that are primarily about that region which I don’t know a lot about … this book was written by his daughter.
September 17, 2023
Because I have read the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (many set in South Dakota), The Checkered Years: A Bonanza Farm Diary 1884-88 by Mary Dodge Woodward (North Dakota), and My Antonia by Willa Cather (Nebraska) I decided to read Old Jules for comparisons. However, I found the book difficult to read due to the distinct dialect in which it is written. There were many terms and phrases that were unusual and looking them up did not always make the meaning clear. Another issue is the lack of dates or years. It makes understanding the timeline difficult and confusing and doesn't easily allow comparisons with other events of the same era. Additionally, Old Jules isn't particularly likeable. One of the first clues is that he had four wives. I could list example after example, but that wouldn't really prove fruitful. The book was moderately interesting in learning about the settling of western Nebraska.
May 2, 2024
This book sat on my parents shelf for as long as I can remember so i finally decided to read it after they were both gone. I grew up in Sheridan Co NE where Old Jules lived and my grandfather went to school w Mari. My grandma was friends w his two youngest daughters and I remember their Garden Club. My great grandmother is even mentioned in the book. Jules was a horribly abusive husband and father. I was surprised to learn how active he was in the community and his passion for settling the area and fending off cattlemen. Also shocked by the murders, suicides, court trials, treatment of women. I do remember hearing about the Sandoz orchards. My descendants were immigrants from Germany and Switzerland, devout Lutherans, and I always envisioned homesteaders in Sheridan Co at this time to be much more tame and stoic! Overall I liked this book because it gave me a different view of life in the time and place where my descendants lived.
January 17, 2018
This is an honest portrait by his daughter of an unlovable man, a Swiss immigrant pioneer in the "hard-land country" of the western Nebraska Sandhills.
The narrative is slowly spooled out in anecdotes and episodes. The story lags in the second quarter of the book but becomes brisk and and engaging after Old Jules's marriage to Mary; the rearing of their children, including the author; and the arrival of modernity on the prairie.
Old Jules is portrayed as an explosive, deeply flawed (and self-declared) genius. His daughter tells his story with depth and precision--and skewers him not with screeds but with subtlety, as when she quotes a man late in the book asking Old Jules, "Why did you have to spend your whole life fighting over stupid things?" That question is the essence of Mari Sandoz's exploration of her father's puzzling life.
The narrative is slowly spooled out in anecdotes and episodes. The story lags in the second quarter of the book but becomes brisk and and engaging after Old Jules's marriage to Mary; the rearing of their children, including the author; and the arrival of modernity on the prairie.
Old Jules is portrayed as an explosive, deeply flawed (and self-declared) genius. His daughter tells his story with depth and precision--and skewers him not with screeds but with subtlety, as when she quotes a man late in the book asking Old Jules, "Why did you have to spend your whole life fighting over stupid things?" That question is the essence of Mari Sandoz's exploration of her father's puzzling life.
September 11, 2025
This is a first hand account by the author of her pioneering father, an educated Swiss immigrant. He arrived in Nebraska just after it became a state and spent the rest of his life trying to add more farmers to the population and warred with the cattlemen although he did eventually raise cattle. He conducted correspondence with the state government, regarding the settler treaties and was well known also as a horticulturalist, creating a number of fruit trees. This book is fun to read because you feel you are right there as pioneer history is being made with sod huts, terrible snowstorms and droughts. It is not perfect, it gets a little convoluted towards the end with multiple relatives, neighbors and settler treaties. Old Jules is a man of his times and mistreats his long suffering wife and children. However, as a primary document to the creation of America, it fascinates.
January 6, 2018
I read this biography of Mari Sandoz's father, Old Jules, years ago when I was in high school and maybe visiting my Nebraska relatives. I remember really liking it then. Now, some 40 years later, I found it hard to read. Her writing style is hard to get used to and so many people and thoughts are intertwined in each chapter that it becomes hard to follow. Old Jules is a somewhat abusive man, which does not help. It does give a good flavor of the white settlement of the northwestern Panhandle of Nebraska from about 1880 through 1928 and the quirks of this very independent Swiss immigrant are brought out well. I wish I had liked the book this second time through as much as I remember liking it as a teenager.
March 19, 2018
Being from Nebraska, I read Mari Sandoz at an early age. 50 yrs. later, I am reading with more understanding. She really portrays early settlement in Western Nebraska and Old Jules was a big part of it. Her writing is beautifully descriptive and accurate. Old Jules was very intelligent and down right mean! I find it difficult to see how Ms. Sandoz could ever come to terms with his treatment of her and the family. I have read several of her books over the years and admire her writing no matter the subject. "Slogum House" and Capital City" were received with hate mail and death threats. Truth hurts, I guess! I especially liked her "Miss Morissa, Doctor of the Gold Trail". You won't be disappointed reading any one or more of her works.
June 7, 2023
I have such mixed feelings about this book. As a native Nebraskan, I should have read it years ago and as someone who lived on the edge of the Sandhills in Broken Bow, the history of the area was very interesting. But the book dragged a little more than what I like and I had a hard time keeping track of all the names of people who crossed paths with Old Jules. My father read this when I was in late elementary school or junior high and was livid at the way Old Jules treated his family. I wasn't keen on it--it's a wonder one of them didn't shoot him with his own gun--but he also had a lot of losses in his life that likely didn't help and I would suspect his mental health wasn't all that good.
September 19, 2023
A grisly and realistic examination of life on the plains in the 1880s-1920s, as well as a painful portrait of an abusive father by his daughter. Instead of the wholesome vision of Laura Ingalls Wilder, we get alcoholism, divorce, insanity, murder, and mob justice. Ultimately, Sandoz tells the story of an unforgiving landscape settled by hardened people.
"One can go into a wild country and make it tame, but, like a coat and a cap and mittens that he can never take off, he must carry the look of the land as it was."
"One can go into a wild country and make it tame, but, like a coat and a cap and mittens that he can never take off, he must carry the look of the land as it was."
July 21, 2023
If I had one word to describe this book it would be 'transporting'. Sandoz takes you to a place that feels both familiar and alien. The time covers a transformative time in the west from the old west of open range to the 1920s with cars and telephones. At the center is an abusive, smart, and complex man, Jules Sandoz. I've seen one star reviews given because Old Jules is such an unlikeable person. If you can stay with the book you'll be rewarded with a first hand view of a life very different than most of ours today.
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