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- Verified Buyer
Ok western type book. Needed it for a class. Came quick.The delivery and condition of the book was great. Very happy with this seller.I have just reread this book and have decided to place it in my top 50 favorite books (I had to kick off Madame Bovary). The other reviewers have done a good job explaining the story and I will not add. Rather, I want to make a recommendation. Before you read this book, I really believe that you should first read OLD JULES, which is a biographical novel of the author's father(it creates his thoughts and dialogue before the author was born)that gives the reader the necessary background to understand the sand-hill culture, and to understand one of the daughters in SLOGUM HOUSE, which is Mari Sandoz aka "Libby." Also, one precaution: this is a stark book--to put it mildly--and readers who can not conceive that there are truly evil people in this world will not appreciate this story. I am planning on spending a day or two in the Mari Sandoz Center at Chadron State College next May--I want to read the author's correspondence as she defended her writing of the novel--and if I pick up anything useful to a potential reader, I will add it to this review.There is a brilliant character at the heart of this frontier saga, set at the turn of the last century in a bleak part of Nebraska. Best-known for her book CRAZY HORSE, Sandoz has created a family tale that revolves around the matriarch, GULLAH, as she systematically sets out to amass a fortune, no matter what it takes. She's a creature ahead of her time (it's too kind to call her a "woman") and the havoc she wreaks in pursuit of her ambition--nothing is ever enough for her, and if we didn't know the book had been written nearly 100 years ago, we'd call it political, because Gullah would fit right in with the plutocrats enriching themselves at the expense of others.More than just good characters, though, Sandoz gives us a sense of place. She was not sentimental about the frontier--she'd lived the harsh life--but she was not immune to its stark beauty. Her descriptions are gorgeous. But this is a tough read in that it's really kind of depressing.This story uses a fictional ranch family to show the historical time period, in this case, the panhandle of Nebraska, starting from President Theodore Roosevelt to the Franklin Roosevelt presidency. It has a political leaning but shows how desperate times were in the Great Depression. It somewhat mirrors what my relatives told me they went through in the Great Depression in rural Nebraska.Before there was an Empire, or a Dynasty. In the Sandhills of Nebraska there was the Slogum family. Mari Sandoz wrote a beautifully raw and brutal story that needs to be brought to the attention of the new readers today.I read Old Jules first, liked Slogum House better. Knew nothing about Nebraska history, enjoyed reading about how the free land was settled.loved it
