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