Customer Reviews

Old Jules: Portrait of a Pioneer

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In the book Old Jules, Sandoz presents a biographical account of her immigrant/pioneer father, Jules Ami Sandoz. By presenting the information in chronological order, Sandoz guides the reader through her father's arrival on the western frontier, emergence as an early community builder and agricultural expert, and role in establishing the identity of the Niobrara country of frontier Nebraska. Sandoz presents her father Jules to the reader relative to his position amidst the dynamic social, cultural, and political climates of late 19th century American frontier life in the Nebraska Territory. The author follows Jules through his involvement in land speculation, agriculture, political dealings, community building, and family life in order to acclimate the reader to the multifaceted realities of frontier life. Sandoz employs her personal knowledge of her father alongside historically accurate data, presenting the reader with not only an entertaining, but also informative biography of Old Jules.

Mari Sandoz argues that the biography of her father - Jules Sandoz: pioneer, settler, entrepreneur, agricultural and horticultural experimenter, area enthusiast and developer, friend of Indians, enemy of entrenched cattlemen, and devil to his family - not only provides entertaining reading, but also accurately depicts the historical period of American frontier life.

In the biography of Old Jules, Sandoz focuses on details of her father's life that distinguish him from other stereotypical pioneers and settlers, as well as commonalities that frontiersmen of the Nebraska Territory shared in their experience. Almost immediately, Sandoz informs the reader about the nationality and social upbringing of Jules, which most likely provided a stark contrast to the socio-economic backgrounds of the majority of pioneers and settlers. Jules immigrated to the United States, leaving behind an upper class background in Switzerland in search of his own fortune and to escape familial pressures to become a doctor. Educated and seemingly intelligent, Jules brought significant talents and strengths to the American frontier. Sandoz argues that her father's cleverness and considerable ability as an organizer and planner allowed him to succeed in the Nebraska Territory as an entrepreneur, agricultural and horticultural specialist, and community builder.

Sandoz shows Jules' unwavering confidence in the ability of the hard Nebraskan land and short growing season to nonetheless yield a successful agricultural return. Jules' detailed observations and recordings allowed him to refine his cultivation methods as to maximize the crop output and quality, making this knowledge a great asset to the frontier community. Sandoz focuses at detail on Jules' interest in agriculture to highlight his overwhelming desire to achieve self-sufficiency, a concept held in high regard by settlers and pioneers of the Great Plains during a period that placed high emphasis on individualism. Jules' contributions to the development of the Niobrara country didn't end with agricultural knowledge; Sandoz informs the reader of her father's correspondences with potential settlers, role in the creation of a local post office, and participation in land speculation for incoming migrants to the area. Sandoz shows that Old Jules' involvement in community organization and planning surpassed that of most people of the frontier. She contests that people of the immediate area looked to her father for not only agricultural advice, but also for guidance in many areas their daily lives including obtaining land, seeking justice, and dealing with the problems posed by the encroaching cattle ranchers.

The significance of Sandoz's biography not only lies in the presentation of her father Old Jules as a unique and capable pioneer and settler, but rather also in the book's accurate description of larger issues facing all settlers and pioneers of the Great Plains during the late 19th century. Sandoz uses the biography of her father as a case study to illustrate the position of the settler and pioneer relative to the conflicts arising with the cattle ranchers, the removal and eventual deterioration of American Indian culture, and the lawlessness that characterized the early history of the Midwest. In her examination of her father Jules, Mari Sandoz successfully shows that the challenging characteristics of American frontier life shaped and defined the lives of the pioneers and settlers of the period giving them a unique identity in the history of the American move westward.

Sandoz's biography of her father successfully combines engaging narrative alongside detailed historical accounts of the Niobrara country of the Nebraska Territory. The book not only entertains the reader through Sandoz's stories of her father Old Jules, but also educates about the nature of American frontier life on the Great Plains during the latter part of the 19th century. Certain elements of the book add to the understanding of the social, economic, and cultural aspects unique to American frontier life, providing a stark contrast to the urbanization taking place in Eastern portion of the country during the same period.

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.

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.

This story is captivating. I have read it several times already, though at first I nearly did not buy it because it was advertised as a tale of the Old West, something I am not an avid reader of. Furthermore, I did not care for the typecast (font) of this book (paperback edition).
No, what was interesting about this book was Mari Sandoz's writing style and how she so justly depicted the life and times of its characters.
It is an adventure story of a man, Old Jules (the author's father) who immigrates to Nebraska in the late 1800s. Also, the story of other people who shared the same world. Whether they were kind, murderous, or sane, you've no doubt about the validity of these people; they come to life on the page. The tough landscapes and seasons, their beauty and severity, are also aptly described.
Still, it is the contradictory nature and actions of Old Jules that remain the focal point. His bouts of abuses and concerns occur throughout this remarkably platonic narrative; this is because Mari Sandoz, in telling this tale, was determined to disassociate herself from personal prejudices; for example, as a crying infant of a few months, she was beat nearly senseless by her father. Many more unkindnesses followed.
Of course, the reality is that Mari Sandoz was greatly affected by her father; his life story remains her literary masterpiece. I was grateful to come across it and have recommended it to others.

Oddly, I found that Sandoz wrote better books about Native American culture than about her own, but this is still wonderful writing. Having first read her biography of Crazy Horse and then Cheyenne Autumn, I was a little disappointed when I first started this story about her father. By the end of the book, however, I found that I had been just as drawn in as I was with her other books. Sandoz has a way of depicting her characters and the worlds in which they live so beautifully that when they die, you feel as if you had truly known them. Certainly Jules Sandoz was not a very likeable character, and yet he was a very powerful man, who left his mark on those who knew him. By the end of Sandoz's first published work, he had definitely left his mark on me. END

Mari Sandoz was the daughter of Old Jules about whom she wrote as an historian rather than as his daughter. Her success is astonishing, as is the respect she retained for a father who on one occasion nearly killed her. It is not a book for the faint of heart. Mother would have been 100 in 1998, and was raised in IA and MN under similar circumstances. She was 'down' for several days after reading it because she related so closely to Mari's life. Old Jules was a man of determination and a dream he would not let die. His story is of individuals needed to settle the midwest which was wrested from weather and cattle barrons. You may become emotionally involved with childhood memories, but you will admire Mari's honesty and the success of Jule's life. So real!

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.

Old Jules is a fascinating look at life on the northern Great Plains and provides a great counter to the sanitized versions of America's frontier, for those of us that learned about it through media like "Little House on the Prairie" and "Bonanza" style depictions. For that, it is a great book.

But it is up to each reader to decide if Jules was a great guy who succeeded despite the tribulations and hardhip of his place and time, or if he was an abusive husband/father who fled his prior home and simply did as he pleased for the rest of his life. This is the enigma...My own opinion is that Jules was somewhat mentally unstable. His leaving Switzerland is understandable, despite the vast majority of immigrants from Europe having been from lower class families than his who had rather more limited opportunities in the 'old country'. By that I mean the West had plenty of cultured people who were attracted to the openess of the frontier (both societal and geo-physical); we just don't hear so much about them. But this story indicates he was educated and may have been a medical student, although it's left speculative. He apparently consulted frontier doctors, and performed rude medicinal and sanitary practices that don't square with what one could safely assume he ought to know if he had medical training (even for those times). Possible explanations for his lack of concern for his family never really come out, and although both author/daughter Mari Sandoz and her brother (who wrote "Son of Old Jules") later dismissed the idea that their childhoods were unusual for that place and time, they clearly were extreme.

I highly recommend the book. It begins immediately after the "Indian Wars" period but before society with its laws and structure had really taken hold. One thing I was unaware of is the prevalence of suicide in those days: it seems to have been fairly common among settlers who reached the end of their endurance (this occurs in another famous book "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. Though technically fiction, Cather's book is the same timeframe and is based on real people and events she knew as a child). There is also mention of several cases of people being sent East to asylums. They just couldn't take the hardship of their ordeals.

For me, the biggest problem in understanding Jules the man is trying to square his upbringing (young Swiss priveleged playboy/student) with what he became (a greasy old man who disdained government - despite the letters he wrote and his advocacy of the farmers versus cattlemen in the stuggle to control western Nebraska - who had minimal concern for his own family).

I wonder if some sort of movie could be made of the story. It tells a lot about the REAL frontier and its hardships, rather than the "log cabin" or "cowboy" themes we're all used to. This era is almost forgotten today. Notice that you can today buy homes modeled on log cabins, of which there are any number of restored examples - but there are almost no old sod houses left. Its almost like there's no nostalgia for that epoch of American history, which is telling by itself.

I have read and reread Old Jules, savoring the stories of his life woven by Mari, his granddaughter. I am fascinated by the descriptions, the details and overall the information this writer provided with the story of her family.

Definitely a must read for anyone wanting to write a western story. I will lovingly keep this volume on my shelf for many years to come.