Nebraska native Willa Cather set many of her books - including her second novel, "O Pioneers" - in the Midwest and often touched on themes of immigration, the challenges of the agricultural industry and the struggles of workaday farmers in her novels. The fact that she actually grew up amid the same people whose stories she depicts gave her books an authenticity that made her novels extremely popular. In "O Pioneers," we meet the Bergsons, a family of farmers in the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska who have emigrated to America from Sweden. When the family patriarch dies, the running of the farm falls to the eldest daughter, Alexandra, who struggles to make the farm viable and provide for the family. Eventually, the focus turns to the romantic entanglements of Alexandra and her brother as well as touching upon the enormous difficulties of running a farm at the turn of the last century. At times funny, touching, tragic and beautiful, "O Pioneers" was a great success when it was first released and the book has been adapted into both a 1992 film and a 2009 opera of the same name. It is presented here in its original and unabridged format.
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ISBN-13
978-1-958943-88-5 (9781958943885)
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Willa Cather was an American novelist who wrote tales of the Great Plains and stories of immigrant and migrant families who settled the American West. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her book "One of Ours," which explored romantic idealism, the frustrations of life in middle America and how World War I profoundly changed the lives of the young men who fought in the conflict. It was published in 1923. Cather was born in Virginia, but her family relocated to Nebraska when Willa was nine years old. They settled in the town of Red Cloud, where her father initially attempted to become a farmer, but eventually moved into the real estate and insurance business. Willa attended school for the first time after the family arrived in Nebraska. Eventually, she would graduate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and spend ten years in Pittsburgh, working as a teacher and a magazine editor at Home Monthly, often contributing her own stories and poems to the publication. After working at the Pittsburgh Leader, Cather moved to New York and began working as an editor at McClure's Magazine where she also contributed stories. They would eventually serialize her first novel, "Alexander's Bridge" in 1912. Cather followed up her first book with what would become known as the "Prairie Trilogy": "O Pioneers!" (1913), "Song of the Lark" (1915) and "My Antonia" 1918. By this time, Cather had firmly established herself as a writer and her Pulitzer for "One of Ours" would forever cement her as a major figure in American literature. Her follow-up, "Death Comes for the Archbishop" (1927) would be cited as one of Modern Library's Best 100 Novels of the 20th century. She lived with her domestic partner, Edith Lewis, for 39 years before developing breast cancer and dying of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1947. She is buried beside Lewis in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
