Early Life and Education
Mari was born near Hay Springs, Nebraska, the eldest of six children born to Swiss immigrants, Jules and Mary Fehr Sandoz. Her father was a violent and domineering man, who disapproved of her writing and reading. Her childhood was spent in hard labor on the home farm, and she developed snow blindness in one eye after a day spent digging the family's cattle out of a snowdrift.
She graduated from the eighth grade at the age of 17, secretly took the rural teachers' exam, and passed. Mari taught in nearby country schools without ever attending high school. At the age of eighteen she married a neighboring rancher, Wray Macumber. The marriage was unhappy and in 1919, citing "extreme mental cruelty," Mari divorced her husband and moved to Lincoln, Nebraska.
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