Rating: 
Summary: There is a reason there are only 5 reviews for this book!
Review: There is no real reason to read this book, it is monotinous life on the old prarie. Only without the excitment of actually living it. You have to sit through and suffer page after page as he describes how flat the prarie is. Go outside and look at your lawn! Wow that was more exciting then hearing Mari describe dirt for five pages! For your own sake don't buy this book. Give the money to some starving children in Rwanda instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing Story
Review: This book purports to be a biography of Jules Sandoz, a Swiss who settled in the Nebraska Panhandle. It is an amazing story of pioneer hardship and of a real character who was so mean he makes me cringe. He tells of life as I am sure it was in Nebraska not long ago--he died in 1930. The book has moments of poignancy, even for one who never knew the hardship: "They would never hear the thunder of the ice going out on Niobrara again, never see the gold of autumn along the bluffs, the ash, the slender yellow pencils, the cottonwoods rustling in chartreuse and orange, the creeper blood splashes on the silver of the buffalo berries. It was only a memory now, like her lover, he who made gay music on the Rhine."
Rating: 
Summary: One of the Most Extraordinary Books of Western Americana
Review: We're buried in books about gunfighters and whores and trainrobbers and other quite atypical denizens of the Old West. This issomething else again -- a story of an implacably determined European immigrant with a dream of re-making himself in the Sand Hills of western Nebraska.The strength of Jules' dream is affecting, and so is the story of its collision with the bleak reality of midwestern frontier life. One branch of my family were ranchers in Wyoming, and their descendants remain a tough lot. Tough doesn't begin to describe Old Jules, and like most very tough people, he was more memorable and even admirable than likeable. When it comes to the lives of women on the frontier, Willa Cather covered similar ground, but Sandoz is absolutely unsparing and is an extraordinarily talented writer. This is one of those books that you'll think about for years. I've bought and given away half a dozen copies over the years.
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