Old Jules: 50th Anniversary Edition

Old Jules was tough, mean, revengeful, yet his daughter went on to become one of the best historical writers of the west. He would get mad when you Mari wrote fiction, or did anything for that matter. Yet he showed her, lived the example of writing, corresponding daily to make his points with politicians, friends and associates. He was tough and mean, but what Mari Sandoz brings to light in this excellent biography are his essential qualities of hard work, perseverience, education and human equality. People with those qualities shaped America, particularily the west. Old Jules open welcome of Native Americans clearly had an impact on Mari Sandoz, showing in her excellent books on the Cheyenne nation and her biography of Crazy Horse. Because Mari is writing about her father, this book helps show not only how a man helped shape his community, but how he helped shape the future of the nation.

I found this book while looking for Sandoz's book on Crazy Horse. A western librarian friend of a friend told her it's one of the most accurate books on life in the Old West.
You'd never get from a movie that so many settlers came from Europe and spoke French or German, or that they would send mail home to find a wife, who'd abandon them after a month.
Sandoz dad's populist temperment and character is familiar back in Switzerland under another name. There's a political party of Jules-like people there called the League of Independents (the "Duttweiler" party). It's affiliated with Migros, a cooperative grocery and low-end retail chain, whose founder was a rebel like Jules.
As a child, I once read books about people whom I imagined were like my own dad, on his deathbed then. This book brought me back. I can imagine my dad living like Jules --- boisterously, grousing but not really unhappy.
Though Mari (whom Jules called Marie but who seems to have adopted the Swiss spelling Mari when she was older) was very unhappy.
After Sandoz got this book right (which took many years), she wrote the Crazy Horse book.

The story of Old Jules is sad but mostly it is aggravating. Jules gets a little ahead, then his idiot friends cripple him. He gets a little ahead, then nature deals a blow. Jules shows vision and works hard, lamenting that he has spent his life "Always building up the land." But the most maddening times are when he gets ahead and instead of taking care of his family's needs, he remortgages his land after finally paying it off and spends this borrowed money on stamps for his stamp collection. Everyone I know who's read the book wants to reach into the pages and just shake this man, asking "What ARE YOU DOING? Forget the stamps! Take care of your family! "
I read this book 20 years ago and it still maddening.

This book is captivating! The imagery is vivid; the language precise and economical. The writing style has a unique rhythm that really brings this story to life. The fact that it is historically accurate adds all the more. This book is a classic of American, particularly Western American, literature. I believe you will thank me for this recommendation if you buy, and read, this book.

Old Jules is not a bad book, it's just too long for one thing. The characters and their lifestyle are quite unique but their lackluster day to day existence needn't have taken up so many pages. If you want gripping, white-knuckle excitement, look elsewhere. The book is interesting from a historical point of view maybe but it just wasn't my kind of read. (Ho-hum........)

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."

One of the best books I have ever read. I gave my first copy away so i bought another one so i could read it again. I loaned it to a 76 year old man that had been tough and strong in his youth. He said it was the best book he had ever read. I put "Lewis and CLark" in this same catagory.

In the beginning this is a difficult read but then you find you just can't put it down. Highly recommend!

This books tells of a pioneer emmigrant that survives the panhandle Nebraska, as a farmer(more his 4th wife than him), when most people thought it couldn't be done. What a great story of a man, and what he puts his family through. This is no Little House on The Prairie.