Willa Cather

O Pioneers! Willa Cather

"The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman," writes Willa Cather in O Pioneers! The country is America; the woman is Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent young Swedish immigrant girl who inherits her father's farm in Nebraska. A model of emotional strength, courage, and resolve, Alexandra fights long and hard to transform her father's patch of raw, wind-blasted 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 upon publication 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 that is both compelling and contradictory. Willa Cather is among the most eminent female American authors. She is known for her depictions of U. S. prairie life in novels like O Pioneers, My Antonia, and Death Comes for the Archbishop. Cather was born in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley but her family relocated to Nebraska in 1883 and she spent the rest of her childhood in Red Cloud, Nebraska. She insisted on attending college, so her family borrowed money so she could enrol at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. While there she became a regular contributor to the Nebraska State Journal. After failing to obtain a position at UNL, she moved to Pennsylvania, where she taught high school and worked for Home Monthly and McClure's Magazine. The latter publication serialized her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, which was heavily influenced by Henry James. For her novels she returned to the prairie for inspiration, and these works became popular and critical successes.