Despite her lack of a high school diploma, she managed to enroll at the University of Nebraska, thanks to a sympathetic dean.

In 1928, when she received word her father was dying, she visited her family, and was stunned by his last request: he asked her to write his life story.

Yet she continued to write, and began work on her next novel, Slogum House, a gritty and realistic tale about a ruthless Nebraska family.

In 1935, she received word that her revised version of Old Jules had won a non-fiction contest held by Atlantic Press, after fourteen rejections.

Some readers were shocked at her unromantic depiction of the Old West, as well as her strong language and realistic portrayal of the hardships of frontier life.

As she says in her preface to Crazy Horse: I have used the simplest words possible, hoping by idiom and figures and the under-lying rhythm pattern to say some of the things of the Indian for which there are no white-man words, suggest something of his innate nature, something of his relationship to the earth and the sky and all that is between.Her meticulous attention to detail, her in-depth research, and her admiration of the Plains Indian culture is also noticeable in later works such as Cheyenne Autumn (1953), The Horsecatcher (1957), and The Story Catcher (1963).

Three other books of her Great Plains series, The Buffalo Hunters (1954), one of her best known, and The Cattlemen (1958) and The Beaver Men (1964) each develop the history of the West in relation to an animal species.

[1] By her request, she was buried south of Gordon, Nebraska, on a hillside overlooking her family's Sandhills ranch.

An historical marker, placed by the Mari Sandoz Heritage Society is at the location where she lived while writing Old Jules.