Willa Cather

O Pioneers! & My Antonia Willa Cather

Two volumes in one. The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman, writes Willa Cather. The country is America; the woman is Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent young Swedish immigrant who inherits her father's Nebraska farm. With strength, courage, and determination, Alexandra transforms her father's patch of prairie into a highly profitable business. A gripping saga of love, murder, greed, failure, and triumph, O Pioneers! vividly portrays the hardships of prairie life. Above all, it champions the belief that hard work is the surest road to personal fulfillment. Described in The New York Times as "American in the best sense of the word," O Pioneers! celebrates the men and women who struggled to build a nation. My Antonia, first published in 1918, and set in Nebraska in the late 19th century, is the tale of the spirited daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family planning to farm on the untamed land. Her admirer, Jim Burden, is, at the time of their meeting, newly orphaned and arriving at his grandparents' neighboring farm on the same night her family strikes out to make good in their new country. Jim chooses the opening words of his recollections deliberately: "I first heard of Antonia on what seemed to be an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America," and it seems almost certain that readers of Cather's masterpiece will just as easily pinpoint the first time they heard of Antonia and her world. It seems equally certain that they, too, will remember that moment as one of great light in an otherwise unremarkable trip through the world.