1896 – 1966

A little girl who grew up on a Nebraska homestead with Swiss German as her mother tongue, and who did not learn to read and write English until she was nine, Marie Sandoz achieved fame as a writer of novels about the American west.

Her novels were praised – and criticized – for the realism with which she portrayed the hardships of frontier life, and her sensitive and well-informed depiction of the Plains Indians.

Although Sandoz had her first story published in a magazine when she was only 11, as a young adult she received only rejection slips for the numerous works she submitted to publishers.

She had moved to Lincoln, studying at the university (although her lack of a high school certificate made her ineligible for a degree), and barely supporting herself in a series of low-paid jobs. In 1933 in despair she burnt all her manuscripts in her back yard and went home to live with her mother.

But a biography of her father, "Old Jules", escaped the flames, and in a revised version it won a competition organized by the Atlantic Press in 1935. It was published and proved a success with critics and public alike.  

Sandoz continued to write; her harsh vision of life in Nebraska provoked such a backlash that she left her home state and moved eventually to New York – an ironic decision, since one of her lifelong battles was to maintain the western flavor of her books in the face of her east coast publishers who tried to impose a standard east-style language.

Another battle was with the public, who resented her demythification of pioneer life in the West. She portrayed not cheerful, honest, God-fearing toilers, but the tough characters she had known in her childhood, exploiting the natural resources and each other.

Also unusual in her writing is her empathy with the Native Americans, whose culture she regarded as equal to that of the white man.