Helpful Score: 2
O Pioneers! is the story of the Nebraska prairie at the turn of the century. It follows Alexandra Bergson from a young lady, whose father leaves the failing family farm in her hands, to a successful, mature business woman. Along the way, the author describes the people who settled and tamed the land. The story is uplifting and tragic at the same time. Cather writes some strong, yet flawed, female characters. I felt if I really knew the characters, even those with smaller rolls in the novel. I definitely recommend the book to anyone with an interest in American history and westward expansion.
Helpful Score: 1
Willa Cather is actually a pioneer. One of the first highly acclaimed female authors of our time, her words are jewels and reading her work is a slow, sweet pleasure. This is a book I cannot give up, so it lives in my "secret stash" and will be re-read from time to time. If you have never read this, you MUST.
This classic story of the Nebraska prairie tells of a remarkable woman, Alexandra Bergson, the daughter of immigrant farmers, whose devotion to the land sustains her through life's calamities.
I so wanted to like this book as I have had people tell me for years what a great book it was. Just did not do it for me.
The 1988 foreword added to the 1913 book almost made me just toss the book. Doris Grumbach wrote the foreward and I found it to be long, boring and filled with unneeded information (at least for me) about Willa Cather's method of writing characters and novels.
I did not see anything out of the ordinary about the novel itself. Any family that has had immigrant farmers in their family history know a similar story of the struggles to survive and if lucky to prosper.
Alexandra Bergson was the only daughter of a Swedish family trying to make a living on the plains of Nebraska. Her father realizes that she better than her 2 older and 1 younger brother was the one who needed to manage the farm after he passed. Alexandra is an excellent stewart of the land and often over the many objections of her older brothers she over the years grows the investment of the family and herself, becoming very prosperous.
The summer her younger brother returns from college things change. Emil is a hard worker but he wants to do more than farm and live on Alexandra's homestead. An old friend of Emil's and one of Alexandra's come back into their lives and nothing will ever be the same again.
The 1988 foreword added to the 1913 book almost made me just toss the book. Doris Grumbach wrote the foreward and I found it to be long, boring and filled with unneeded information (at least for me) about Willa Cather's method of writing characters and novels.
I did not see anything out of the ordinary about the novel itself. Any family that has had immigrant farmers in their family history know a similar story of the struggles to survive and if lucky to prosper.
Alexandra Bergson was the only daughter of a Swedish family trying to make a living on the plains of Nebraska. Her father realizes that she better than her 2 older and 1 younger brother was the one who needed to manage the farm after he passed. Alexandra is an excellent stewart of the land and often over the many objections of her older brothers she over the years grows the investment of the family and herself, becoming very prosperous.
The summer her younger brother returns from college things change. Emil is a hard worker but he wants to do more than farm and live on Alexandra's homestead. An old friend of Emil's and one of Alexandra's come back into their lives and nothing will ever be the same again.
A very good classic, Cather is an amazing author. Its been awhile since I've read this book but I will always remember its entrancing family values.
Cather's classic novel of a young woman who takes over the family farm after her father's death, is a beautifully-written paean to the European immigrants who brought America's midwest into bloom.
From Amazon.com:
The land belongs to the future... that's the way it seems to me....I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother's children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it -- for a little while."
O Pioneers! (1913) was Willa Cather's first great novel, and to many it remains her unchallenged masterpiece. No other work of fiction so faithfully conveys both the sharp physical realities and the mythic sweep of the transformation of the American frontier -- and the transformation of the people who settled it. Cather's heroine is Alexandra Bergson, who arrives on the wind-blasted prairie of Hanover, Nebraska, as a girl and grows up to make it a prosperous farm. But this archetypal success story is darkened by loss, and Alexandra's devotion to the land may come at the cost of love itself.
At once a sophisticated pastoral and a prototype for later feminist novels, O Pioneers! is a work in which triumph is inextricably enmeshed with tragedy, a story of people who do not claim a land so much as they submit to it and, in the process, become greater than they were.
The land belongs to the future... that's the way it seems to me....I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother's children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it -- for a little while."
O Pioneers! (1913) was Willa Cather's first great novel, and to many it remains her unchallenged masterpiece. No other work of fiction so faithfully conveys both the sharp physical realities and the mythic sweep of the transformation of the American frontier -- and the transformation of the people who settled it. Cather's heroine is Alexandra Bergson, who arrives on the wind-blasted prairie of Hanover, Nebraska, as a girl and grows up to make it a prosperous farm. But this archetypal success story is darkened by loss, and Alexandra's devotion to the land may come at the cost of love itself.
At once a sophisticated pastoral and a prototype for later feminist novels, O Pioneers! is a work in which triumph is inextricably enmeshed with tragedy, a story of people who do not claim a land so much as they submit to it and, in the process, become greater than they were.
This is the 3rd book by Willa Cather that I have read, and is my favorite thus far. The character of Alexandra Bergson is well developed, but still mysterious. The Nebraska prairie comes under human control, but human nature cannot always be controlled. Consider that this book was written in 1913 - so a woman heroine in a novel was not the norm. The descriptions in the book invite you to slow down and re-read some passages because they are so wonderful.
Willa Cather is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. I had never read her before this year when I read My Antonia. Anxious to continue with her Prairie trilogy I read O Pioneers. Memorable book full of diverse characters, each with a story to tell, The protagonist, Alexandra, is what the story turns on and she is amazing!
I recommend this book to anyone
Willa Cather rules as do the women in her books. Loved it.
Read it in a weekend. I'm a big city girl and it had me longing for the plains.
I read "My Antonia" a few weeks ago, and loved it so much that I immediately ordered this book. It, too, was amazing, and I couldn't put it down. Beautifully written.
Wasn't what I expected, but all in all it was a prety good read
