Written between 1943 and 1946, A Man Without Shoes – an epic novel of the immigrant experience in America – was finally self-published in 1951 after over 30 rejections. As Sanford explained 'in 1947, it was a new kind of cold altogether: McCarthyism, it was called, and hard weather was no longer on the way, -it was here. For A Man Without Shoes, the sixteen seasons of the next four years were all of them winter. During that period, the book was submitted to some thirty publishers, and thirty-some times it was declined.'

The novel was considered too politically radical and leftist for the mainstream publishers at the dawn of the McCarthy era.