Books: In Odd Oklahoma

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CIMARRON—Edna Ferber—Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

Author Edna Ferber writes novels that thousands read. That she chose such a subject as Cimarron's is an indication of the growing interest of U. S. readers in the history of their country. For Cimarron, now the name of an Oklahoma county, once meant the lawless no-man's-land between Texas and Oklahoma which in the '80s was a. wilderness of free cattle range. In Cimarron Author Ferber tells how the Territory was settled; how it became gradually civilized, then suddenly rich from its oil. Now full-blood Osage Indians, bemillioned overnight, ride blanketed in limousines and leave them where they smash.

Yancey Cravat, silver-voiced lawyer, dead shot, thespian idealist, came up from the Cimarron, from a dubious past, to decorous Wichita, Kan., captivated Wichita's belle, Sabra Venable, carried her off with him over the protests of her family to help build the new Territory of Oklahoma. They settled in Osage City (a fictitious name), where houses were scarce, water scarcer, whiskey and sudden death plentiful, a man's life worth less than a horse's. Yancey started a newspaper, made many friends, many enemies. At Osage's first church service, held in Arkansas Grafs tent-saloon, Yancey killed his chief rival. The newspaper prospered; Yancey lost interest in it. One day he disappeared; when he came back five years later with breath-taking tales of the Yukon, Osage City was on its feet; his family no longer needed him. From time to time he disappeared; Sabra, industrious, civic-minded, became the town's solid first citizen, Yancey its stirring legend. Hard-drinking, straight-shooting, impulsive, un- reliable, Yancey had wanted to build Utopia on the Oklahoma prairie: the women were too much for him. What came was not Utopia but civilization: women's clubs, department stores. Yancey's spectacular end was like him: at a crisis he appeared suddenly from nowhere, did the prodigious thing, saved hundreds of lives, died with a quotation on his lips.

The Author. Says Author Edna Ferber: "Only the more fantastic and improbable events in this book are true. . . . Anything can have happened in Oklahoma. Practically everything has." Author Ferber, unmarried, 42, was born in Kalamazoo, Mich., of Jewish parents, now lives in Manhattan. A reporter at 17, she worked on the Milwaukee Journal, Chicago Tribune, wrote her first novel, Dawn O'Hara, in 1911. Author Ferber has a creamy complexion and thick black hair, is afraid of thunderstorms. She does all her writing on a typewriter. No ad- mirer of the highbrow, says she: "I have long since ceased trying to write better than I can." Other books: Buttered Side Down, Roast Beef Medium, Personality Plus, Emma McChesney & Co., The Girls, So Big, Show Boat, Mother Knows Best; with Playwright George S. Kaufman, a play: The Royal Family.