The noted Western historian, novelist, and teacher Mari Sandoz was born Marie Susette Sandoz, the oldest child of Jules and Mary Fehr Sandoz, Swiss immigrants and homesteaders in the Niobrara River region of northwestern Nebraska. She grew up in a turbulent, impoverished household dominated by her father's violent temper. When Mari was fourteen, the family moved to the sandhills, twenty-five miles southeast of the Niobrara. The area was treeless, stark, monotonous, and mysterious; the hills both fascinated and frightened her.

After graduating from the eighth grade, Sandoz taught in nearby country schools. She did not attend high school. At eighteen she married a neighboring rancher, Wray Macumber, and continued to teach intermittently during their five years of marriage. In 1919 Sandoz divorced her husband and left the sandhills for Lincoln, 450 miles across the state. Her letters and papers never refer to her marriage. For the next sixteen years she...