O Pioneers!

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.