O Pioneers!
Ratings30
Average rating3.8
"Alexandra, daughter of a Swedish immigrant farmer in Nebraska, inherits the family farm and finds love with an old friend." "The heroic battle for survival of simple pioneer folk in the Nebraska country of the 1880s. John Bergson, a Swedish farmer, struggles desperately with the soil but dies unsatisfied. His daughter Alexandra resolves to vindicate his faith, and her strong character carries her weak older brothers and her mother alng to a new zest for life. Years of privation are rewarded on the farm. But when Alexandra falls in love with Carl Linstrum, and her family objects because he is poor, he leaves to seek a different career. After Alexandra's younger brother Emil is killed by the jealous husband of the French girl Marie Shabata, however, Carl gives up his plans to go to he Klondike, returns to marry Alexandra and take up the life of the farm." Haydn. Thesaurus of Book Dig.
Series
Featured Series
2 primary booksGreat Plains Trilogy
Great Plains Trilogy is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 1913 with contributions by Willa Cather.
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
4.5 stars. A wonderful read for Cather fans but it didn't capture me quite the way My Ántonia did.
I read the Great Plains trilogy out of order, having finished My Antonia last year not even realizing it was part of a larger work. This is the first volume.
This is a really beautiful, sad book about life on the Nebraska prairie at the turn of the 20th century. The characterization is well devleoped and it's so succinct. I have read so, so many overly long books that it's a pleasure to read something where nothing written seemed superfluous.
I will say that is has a fairly puritanical moral compass, so if that's not something you jive with, the ending of this book might give you pause. However, I think it's very in keeping with the attitudes of when this was written.
Beautiful prose, but could not develop any emotional connection whatsoever to these characters apart from Ivar. I came away wishing the bulk of the story was focused on him instead.
