O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

 

Summary (from the publisher): O Pioneers!, Willa Cather's second novel, tells the story of an immigrant family's struggle to save their Nebraska farm. Cather's placement of a strong and capable woman at the center of the story, her realistic depiction of life on the midwestern prairie, and her vivid portrayal of the immigrant experience at the turn of the century make O Pioneers! a true American classic.

Review: My review of this seems in some ways impacted by the fact that I read this book on the heels of reading Willa Cather's novel My Antonia. Both novels focus on the Nebraska landscape and the hardscrabble farming community made up largely of self-made immigrants. This novel follows Alexandra Bergson, who takes over the family farm in the wake of her father's death. A savvy businesswoman, she manages to turn their land into a prosperous farm, despite her brothers' more cautious ideas. Now middle-aged, she is viewed as a wealthy landowner and has raised her youngest brother to have big dreams and sent him off to college. 

In both of Cather's novels, the main character is truly the landscape. All of her characters acknowledge that they are just brief tenants on the land, that existed before and will continue to exist. Many are broken physically or mentally by the harsh living on the prairie: "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" (111).

This book has so many lovely, profound moments and images, such as Carl's observation that "there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years" (43). I greatly admire Cather's beautiful, poetic writing and the way she brings Nebraska life at the turn of the century to life for her readers. This is such a beautiful portrait of life in a particular time and place, and all of the characters are products of this exact moment in time. 

In a sense, the story is about the fickle nature of life and the whim of fate that decides each character's story. This book has a very tragic ending for several of the characters. Beyond their violent end, which was horrible enough, I was very surprised by Alexandra's reaction and behavior in the wake of these events, which was to extent unbelievable grace and forgiveness when I don't know that it was necessarily deserved. 

Stars: 4

Related Title: 

• My Antonia by Willa Cather