O Pioneers

When the Bergson family leave their home in Sweden to travel to the United States in search of a better life, they, like many immigrants, are awed by the beautiful harshness of their new life in Nebraska. When their father, John Bergson, grows sick and dies, he leaves the farm in the hands of his eldest daughter Alexandra Bergson. Resourceful and determined, Alexandra devotes her life to her family's farm, determined to prosper even as her neighbors are overwhelmed by the unremitting demands of pioneer life. But when she falls in love with her childhood friend, Carl Linstrum, Alexandra must choose between her duty to the land, and to her heart. A spirited celebration of the immigrants who have shaped the United States, O Pioneers! is a masterpiece by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

Willa Cather was the 1922 winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Her breakthrough in literature were the three novels featured here in this edition, the so-called “Great Plains Trilogy”. All three novels stage in Nebraska and the surrounding Great Plains territory and deal with the life there, family challenges and romance. Included are: O Pioneers! The Song of the Lark My Antonia

Willa Cather was the 1922 winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Her breakthrough in literature were the three novels featured here in this edition, the so-called Prairie trilogy. All three novels stage in Nebraska and the surrounding Great Plains territory and deal with the life there, family challenges and romance. Featured here are: O Pioneers! The Song of the Lark My Antonia

Cather, the Nebraska-born novelist, describes her childhood, her career as a writer, and the influences on her work

Willa Cather said that O Pioneers! was her first authentic novel, ?the first time I walked off on my own feet?everything before was half real and half an imitation of writers whom I admired.? Cather?s novel of life on the Nebraska frontier established her reputation as a writer of great note and marked a significant turningøpoint in her artistic development. No longer would she let literary convention guide the form of her writing; the materials themselves would dictate the structure. The paperback edition contains all the text and scholarly apparatus found in the original Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Edited according to standards set by the Committee for Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association, this volume presents the full range of biographical, historical, and textual information on the novel.

"O Pioneers! vividly recalls the stories of the immigrant settlers Cather knew during her childhood and teenage years in Red Cloud." -- publisher's description.