It is not altogether unusual, in these literate days, to come upon a first novel of artistic merit. But it is always bound to be something of an event when a first novel not only proves to be admirable on the score of craftmanship but also introduces to the ranks of contemporary novelists a new and original and arresting personality. This is what "Slogum House" does. While it is a first novel, and one to review with surprise and remember with pleasure, it is not a first book. Mari Sandoz's story of her father, "Old Jules," won a non-fiction prize award in 1935.

Geographically the two narratives are similar…. Mari Sandoz shows herself so closely informed of the life of her own country—its history, its physical aspect, its economic roots and political necessities—that a reader even slightly acquainted with the literature of the Middle West could identify not only the scene of her story but the very decade in which any given action must have occurred. Thus, among other things, "Slogum House" is a fine piece of reporting.

There are dozens of scenes which will stick in the reader's mind like burrs in a saddle blanket. The dusty little court room at Dumur, where the Slogum boys come to trial, first for a matter of colt stealing and later for the murder of the principal witness against them. The parlor at Slogum House, where the pretty daughters entertain the county officialdom and the "upstairs girls" are sold off to console the cowhands and teamsters. Gulla Slogum's office, the center of her spider-web, with its map of her projected rangeland empire. The crow's nest on top of the house, where lurks an occasional fugitive from justice, holding his gun steady out of sheer desperation whenever the trapdoor is lifted….

The whole intricate plot, the whole sprawling and vastly populated scene of "Slogum House," is integrated in [a] single figure. Gulla is the rugged individualist—the very archetype of the unscrupulous builders of empire to whom the West offered, in the past century, such golden opportunity. Moreover, Gulla had suffered a serious slight back in Ohio. She had succeeded in her intention of marrying Rudy Slogum. But when she went to call on his sisters she had been sent around to the back door, where she was offered a cup of tea in the kitchen and a ten-dollar bill.

This was the springboard of Gulla's soaring ambition. Definitely she meant to wring a fortune out of the cattle country, by foul means if fair proved inefficient, and to show those sisters of Rudy's a thing or two before she was through. But it ought to be explained, in justice to Mari Sandoz, that this is no childish tale of obsession and spite. It is a remarkably sweeping and ironic picture of America's last frontier during a period of half a century. Gulla's ambition, like all authentic urges of the kind, ends by outstripping and losing sight of its original object. In the most vivid sense she grows up with the country.

It is clearly no part of Mari Sandoz's intention in this novel to express a political or social philosophy, although she permits her characters their convictions and programs and panaceas. These are bound to arise, she would seem to say, whenever the going gets particularly rough. She brings her story to 1933, through all the catch-phrases of the recent depression, but never without a backward glance at the hard times of the Nineties—when, as we always seem apt to forget, similar philosophies flourished.

If "Slogum House" itself has a conclusion to express, it is concerned rather with human character than with any principle of collective action. Laws may be passed and economies planned, but the strong and insensitive still have a natural advantage in dealing with the weak and vulnerable.

This may not be a pretty conclusion. But "Slogum House" could not be described as a pretty book. On the contrary, it may be attacked in some quarters as a sordid book…. It is neither sordid nor obscene, however, because it is free of any gratuitous intention in these respects. Mari Sandoz has included nothing here which is not a necessary and legitimate part of her picture.