I hadn't heard of Edna Ferber until a friend mentioned her love of the author's novels. But once she started listing the screenplays from her books I understood her obsession with the author: Giant and Showboat are two of her most popular. While searching for a book set in Oklahoma for my 50 State Reading Challenge Cimarron was one that was listed. Written in the late 1920s, it gives a vivid description of the difficult life when homesteaders descended upon the dusty plains of Oklahoma's red soil. Not long after the settlers became comfortable with life with their neighboring Indians who had been moved to an Oklahoma reservation, the oil boom hit. The story is set in a fictional town of Osage and follows Yancy Cravat, a lawyer and newspaperman and his wife Sabra, the daughter of an elegant Southern family. Below is the trailer for the 1960 Cimarron film. Note: Yancy Cravat's name was changed to Cimarron in the movie.
From the cover: Cimarron, that wild and unruly strip of land between Texas and Oklahoma, was to be thrown open to homesteaders. The city of Osage, tents and shacks and wagons, rose where but one day before were only Indians, rattlesnakes and outlaws. To this crude city came Yancey Cravat whose eloquent speach and ready guns had already made him a legend, and his wife Sabra, daughter of the elegant and delicate Southern aristocracy.
