Mari Sandoz was a didactic writer. Because of her tendency toward instruction, she found much of American fiction—particularly romantic western novels—thin, "without anything of the push and throb of life, totally inconsequential." She liked bone and muscle in literature. She blamed what she considered the poor quality of domestic fiction on the American writers' tendency to conform to the commercial market, and waged a continuous battle herself against what she termed "eastern editorial rewriting and pressure to recast [her works] on popular western notions." With few exceptions, Sandoz wrote to please herself and considered the market later. In this way she sought to achieve something more lasting, more permanent, in her work. (p. 133)

Sandoz is best known for her nonfiction, particularly the six volumes of history and biography which comprise her Great Plains or Trans-Missouri series. Yet Sandoz began her career writing fiction and, prior to her death in 1966, she published a total of eight books which are generally described as fiction and more than a dozen short stories. For the most part, however, her fiction has not received the same wide acclaim as her nonfiction…. [The] author herself was aware of certain shortcomings in her fiction writing. She viewed herself primarily as a historian who only aspired to be a literary artist, and was struck again and again by the inadequacy of much of her fiction.

Although it is true that Mari Sandoz' fiction is less effective than her nonfiction, her novels—particularly the early, more serious ones—are interesting and make a valid contribution to an understanding of the times about which they were written and of the author herself. (pp. 133-34)

Believing that serious writers, particularly beginners, "do their best work in material with which they have an emotional identity," Sandoz found in the story of her father and the community he helped to establish some of the most promising material to start with. In the long and difficult process of writing Old Jules, Sandoz became acutely aware of the drama of human conflict, especially when it resulted from greed and the lust for power, and this awareness influenced her thinking and helped mark the future direction of her career. By taking a locale as familiar to her as her own hands, the Sand Hills of western Nebraska, and introducing into it an egocentric young Swiss of some will-to-power, certain questions were inevitably raised in the author's mind. What if Old Jules had been devoid of a social conscience? What if his first thoughts had not been to make a contribution to the larger community? While those around her talked of the shortcomings of other nations and of other peoples during the early 1930s, Sandoz wondered if some of the same faults might not exist among our pioneer ancestors.

About the time the Old Jules manuscript was being gathered into a whole, Sandoz came across a book that disturbed her as almost nothing had since childhood. The book, Mein Kampf, came to her in a German edition of 1927. She later recalled that the book was written in the kind of German she understood most readily, "bad German." What made the book so disturbing to her was that unlike Old Jules, its author appeared to be a true will-to-power individual. (pp. 134-35)

Out of the combined experience of writing Old Jules and learning about Hitler, Sandoz decided to write another book, a protest novel against the will-to-power individual and his system. The selection of the novel as a form for the book at once freed her from certain kinds of accountability, and allowed her to present her own views by manipulating both plot and character. The use of the novel for a didactic purpose was perfectly compatible with Sandoz' concept of fiction. She believed that the novelist is free to play God…. She also believed that novels could be used as a means of social criticism, and, although she believed that propaganda was always inartistic, she did not see that as a serious flaw if the book were written with sufficient forcefulness.

According to Sandoz, will-to-power individuals can rise to prominence only within a society in flux. For setting, she drew upon her own experience in the upper Niobrara country of western Nebraska during the early settlement period when land titles were not yet fixed. To disguise the setting she simply inserted an oxbow in the river, made up a few counties, and peopled them with fictitious characters. And because she recognized that in the animal kingdom the female is frequently the aggressor with an instinct for acquisitiveness, she decided to make the main character in the first novel a woman—one "masculine" enough to control lawlessness and to overcome opposition to her empire. The result was Gulla Slogum of Slogum House, a composite of the villainous types who sometimes operated the road ranches along the main arteries of the trans-Mississippi West, and one of the most repellent female characters in all of western American literature.

Because she believed that the will-to-power individual prostitutes the beautiful around him, she gave Gulla a beautiful daughter, and one not quite so beautiful, to pacify local officials. In addition, she supplied Gulla with the instruments she needed to carry out her programs of lawlessness, her Schwarze Korps, who could kill or emasculate anyone threatening her growth or expanse of power. For those who could not be corrupted or destroyed she needed someone who could be friendly and provide decent treatment, someone who could accommodate them for the time being. So she gave Gulla another daughter "who had no truck with the activities of her sisters of the bedroom, or the upstairs girls imported for the common customer." This daughter kept the freighters' beds clean, cooked meals with light biscuits and plum jam, and saw to it that they got away on time, their goods and their bodies intact.

But Sandoz did not feel her story was complete without the disarming aspect of weakness, of gentleness too, so she created Ward, the youngest son. And because "the set up must always look legal," she gave Gulla a husband, Ruedy, an ineffectual man who could not countenance the activities of Slogum House and so took up a separate homestead "across the hogback" and cared for such victims of the system as he could—"The charities of Slogum House" as Sandoz called them. (pp. 135-37)

At first the book brought only disappointment to the author. Although it was viewed as a work of genius by some, it was carried gingerly to the ashcan by others, especially in her own state. The objection was raised that the book slandered the pioneers, who, in the minds of many, so diligently tamed the wilderness. Then, too, Sandoz had defied tradition by giving a house of prostitution an agrarian setting. As a result, the author was hissed on the streets of the state's capital…. In addition, the book was banned from several libraries around the state, including the Omaha Public Library. (p. 138)

But the real source of disappointment to Sandoz was not that the book became a source of controversy; rather it was the fact that, like Old Jules before, this book fell short of her initial conception.

On the surface, Slogum House is the simple story of violence in the struggle for wealth in a small portion of the West….

On another level, however, the book is intended as an allegorical study of the will-to-power individual or nation that uses force to overcome opposition, and willingly foregoes justice and truth in the process. The presentation of a society where violence is untrammeled was intended to disturb its readers. As a trained observer, Sandoz tried to visualize the methods a person like Hitler might employ in an attempt to dominate the world, and to duplicate them on a smaller scale in her story. (p. 139)

When the book came out, however, practically no one said anything about its larger purpose or meaning. Perhaps this was the author's fault. Writing as much for posterity as for her own generation, Sandoz tried to avoid the over-obvious. Her terseness of expression may have put the book beyond the grasp of most readers. In any event, Sandoz felt as though people were hissing her for the wrong reasons, and for a while it seemed to her as if she were drifting about in darkness. Then a letter came to her from a man in Winnipeg who saw its meaning. It was followed by another letter written by a lawyer in Washington, D.C.… It helped reassure her that this, one of her favorite books, had not been a complete failure. Since Sandoz did not believe that serious writers should expect too much, the fact that two widely separated people saw the meaning was compensation enough. (pp. 139-40)

[In Capitol City] Sandoz did not focus exclusively on Lincoln…. She decided to create a composite capital city, a sort of universal portrait of midwestern state capitals, just as she had made a composite road ranch in Slogum House. In Capital City the city itself becomes a major character, making it necessary to limit her usual treatment of years (forty in each of her two previous books) to a matter of weeks—from the September state fair to election time in November. (p. 141)

In Capital City the author deals with the same destructive forces as in Slogum House, only this time the evils do not result from individual avarice isolated on the frontier. Instead, they occur within a highly organized community where nothing is done to prevent the will-to-power individual from rising. The result is a microcosmic study of how the author thought the modern world gets led into fascism.

This time there were apparently not even two people who seemed to understand what the book was about. Again, although many people professed to like the novel, it fell far short of her expectations. Then came Norway, the Low Countries, and the fall of France. Finally, late one evening, Sandoz received a phone call from a man who confessed: "It looks like we have Capital City all over the world." From that point on she began to receive more and more letters from people who recognized Capital City as a serious book, an allegorical novel with broad implications. (pp. 142-43)

Mari Sandoz is not an outstanding novelist…. But because Sandoz was not an acknowledged expert in some of the areas that concerned her, she had to turn to the novel form or remain silent. In an effort to get her message across in fiction, however, she manipulated plots and characters excessively. As a result, her books fail to radiate a sense of discovery. But they do remain interesting experiments—attempts to portray aspects of fascism in western American garb. (p. 143)