Book Review : O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

Willa Cather knew the frontier life as a young girl and she used this experience to write this book, the first of the Great Plains trilogy.

Alexandra Bergson comes over the ocean from Sweden as a young girl with her parents to live on the Nebraska frontier. When her parents pass away, Alexandra becomes a surrogate parent to her three brothers Lou, Oscar, and Emil. Alexandra is well-organised and efficient and has plenty of success with the family farm, buying land whenever the family can afford it. Lou and Oscar get married and move away to their own farms with their wives, and Emil is sent to college in Mexico City.

Emil has always loved a girl from Bohemia called Maria, who chooses to marry a fellow from their old country called Frank Shabata. However, Emil and Maria end up having an affair and Frank shoots both of them dead, serving ten years in jail. Alexandra has always had a soft spot for a man called Carl Linstrum, whom her brothers truly despise. When Carl decides to try and earn a fortune in the Yukon gold rush, she hardens her heart and assumes her chance for love has gone forever, however…