Kirjahaku

First published in the dark days immediately before World War II, "Capital City" is Mari Sandoz's angriest and most political novel. Like many important American novels of the 1930s - John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath", John Conroy's "The Disinherited", Robert Cantwell's "Land of Plenty" - "Capital City" depicts the troubles and responses of working people trapped in the Great Depression. It is a unique portrayal of the depression in the Great Plains, and a study of the forces that bitterly contended for wealth and power. Sandoz researched the daily life and behind-the-scenes operations of several state capitals in the thirties before drawing them together in this novel, part allegory, part indictment, part warning.Famous for her passionate writing, Sandoz gave "Capital City" the full measure of ferocity and rage. 'The violence in this new novel is almost unrelieved by any sweetness and light...This novel is strong meat; not at all for the squeamish' - "Saturday Review of Literature".

A hold, biting novel by the author of "Old Jules (BB 100) and Crazy Horse (BB 110)", "The Tom-Walker" spans three generations in a Midwestern family. The patriarch, Milt Stone, who lost a leg fighting in Grant's army, is the Tom-Walker, circus slang for man on stilts. After the Civil War he takes his family west to the Missouri country. There he gains a reputation as a raconteur and as a passionate defender of the little man who works hard, fights the wars, and gets squeezed out by powerful interests. He lives to see his son and grandson fight in World War I and World War II, respectively, and return home from those wars, maimed like him, only to have to resume a fight just to stay alive.Crowded with living characters, "The Tom-Walker" never loses the larger view of American history. From the Gilded Age to the Atomic Age, everybody is 'trying to be either a Jay Gould or a Jesse James, out for easy money, everybody is wanting to be king of something: mines, railroads, cattle, outlaws, anything'. How people like the Stones fare is the story within this story. 'Rich and warm and extravagant and deeply rooted in what her America has been and is' - "New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review". 'A vigorous and thoughtful novel' - "New York Times". 'There is a good deal of America in the book, and the narrative teems with violent energy' - "New Yorker".