"A few years ago, as I listened one night to my mother telling
incidents of her life pioneering in the semi-arid region of Western
Kansas, it occurred to me that the picture of that early time was
worth drawing and preserving for the future, and that, if this were
ever to be done, it must be done soon, before all of the old
settlers were gone. This book is the result-an effort to picture
that life truly and realistically. It is the story of an energetic
and capable girl, the child of German immigrant parents, who at the
age of seventeen married a young German farmer, and moved to a
homestead on the wind-swept plains of Kansas, where she reared
eleven of her twelve children, and remembering regretfully her own
half-day in school, sent nine of them through college. It is a
story of grim and tenacious devotion in the face of hardships and
disappointments, devotion that never flagged until the long, hard
task of near a lifetime was done."--John Ise (from the preface)
Deeply moved by his mother's memories of a waning era and
rapidly disappearing lifestyle, John Ise painstakingly recorded the
adventures and adversities of his family and boyhood neighbors--the
early homesteaders of Osborne County, Kansas. First published in
1936, his "nonfiction novel" Sod and Stubble has since become a
widely read and much loved classic. In the original, Ise changed
some identities and time sequences but accurately retained the
uplifting and disheartening realities of prairie life. Von
Rothenberger brings us a new annotated and expanded edition that
greatly enhances Ise's timeless tale. He includes the entire first
edition-replete with Ise's charm, wit, and veracity, restores four
of Ise's original chapters that have never been published, and adds
photographs of many of the key characters. In his notes,
Rothenberger reveals the true identity of Ise's family and
neighbors, provides background on their lives, and places events
within a wider historical and geographical context.
Ushering us through a dynamic period of pioneering history, from
the 1870s to the turn of the century, "Sod and Stubble" abounds
with the events and issues--fires and droughts, parties and
picnics, insect infestations and bumper crops, prosperity and
poverty, divisiveness and generosity, births and deaths--that
shaped the lives and destinies of Henry and Rosa Ise, their family,
and their community.
One hundred and twenty-five years after Osborne County was
organized and Henry Ise homesteaded his claim, a corner of
nineteenth-century Kansas social history remains safeguarded thanks
to the tenacity of John Ise and the insight of Von Rotheberger, who
enlivens Ise's story with revealing detail.
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