Mari Sandoz - Later Life and Works

Later Life and Works

Sandoz's subsequent novels, Slogum House (1937) and Capital City (1939), brought her notoriety of a different nature: hate mail and threats. The first book was considered an attack on the character of rural Nebraskans, and Capital City was perceived as an assault on the city of Lincoln.

Sandoz moved to Denver, partly to escape the backlash, and also for better research facilities. Later, she settled in New York so she could access the research material on the West, and have proximity to her publishers.

In 1942 her monumental biography of the great Lakota leader Crazy Horse was published. It is entitled Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas. Sandoz proved to be ahead of her time by writing the biography from within the Lakota world-view, using Lakota concepts and metaphors, and even replicating Lakota patterns of speech. Some critics consider it her greatest work. As she says in her preface to Crazy Horse:

Her meticulous attention to detail, her in-depth research, and admiration of the Plains Indian culture is also noticeable in later works such as Cheyenne Autumn (1953), The Horsecatcher (1957), and The Story Catcher (1963).

Three other books of her Great Plains series, The Buffalo Hunters (1954), The Cattlemen (1958), and The Beaver Men (1964) each develop the history of the West in relation to an animal species.

Sandoz liked to encourage writers . She presented summer writing workshops at institutions such as the University of Wisconsin–Madison, reviewed manuscripts sent to her by aspiring authors, and taught creative writing through programming produced by Nebraska Educational Television. She advised writers to "pick a subject you know well, and write about it." Sandoz kept writing, even within a month of her death from bone cancer in 1966.

By her request, she was buried south of Gordon, Nebraska, on a hillside overlooking her family's Sandhills ranch.