O Pioneers!
Willa Cather’s 1913 novel of Swedish immigrants on the Nebraska Divide. Alexandra Bergson inherits her father’s failing homestead and, alone among her family, believes the land can be made to yield; the book follows her across the decades from raw prairie to prosperous farm, and through the loves and the killing that come with the settled community she has helped to build. The first of Cather’s prairie novels, and the one in which she found her subject.
Recommended by 1 Person
Simon Winchester
To me, Nebraska is a fantastically interesting crossroads, and a place where the east-west journeying of America is at its apex. You see the quintessence of pioneering in Nebraska. Willa Cather, who was born there but spent most of her writing life in New York City, felt a keen sense of nostalgia for the very hardscrabble life in the early pioneering days in Nebraska, and has written several books.
Interview · January 2012
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