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 first of the Cather Scholarly Editions sets a high standard of quality. . . . Text and context reveal the splendor of O Pioneers! and enrich both the experience and study of Cather’s extraordinary prose."—Western American Literature

"This beautifully produced book is a joy to read and demonstrates the real pleasures to be derived from meticulous attention to detail and the highest standards of scholarship."—American Literary Scholarship

This early novel is now held to be a very critical and pivotal one in the whole development of the novelist, and this new edition provides . . . a fine printing for readers.”—Choice

★ 03/01/2014
Gr 8 Up—This work, written in 1913, was the first in Cather's "Great Plains" trilogy, and it was followed by The Song of the Lark and My Antonia. Strong-willed, intelligent Alexandra Bergson is the daughter of Swedish immigrants. She inherits her father's farmland instead of it being left to her brothers, Emil, Oscar, and Lou, because she has the vision and foresight to try new crops, buy additional lands, and take risks in order to reap future rewards. Cather's poetic and lyrical writing captures the Nebraska prairie and rolling hills. Using a variety of voices and capturing the dialects of the various immigrants who inhabit the novel, reader Betsy Bronson is impeccable. Her melodic voice imbues Cather's words with the sentiments of love, envy, jealousy, and peace that drive the story. This recording is delightful and leaves one with the understanding and appreciation that the land is always there for those who take time to truly see and appreciate it.—Patricia Ann Owens, formerly with Illinois Eastern Community Colleges, Mt. Carmel

This famous novel portraying the lives of Swedish immigrants in turn-of-the-century Nebraska must have sorely challenged narrator Kate Reading. She nails the various accents of her characters and delivers the vivid narrative with dulcet tones and magnificent phrasing. Still, the narration is dull, almost plodding, the result of too much detachment. Whereas the author expresses a deeply intimate knowledge and concern for her folk and their doings, Reading simply doesn’t engage. Her voice is a godlike mask, too lofty to care about the plain, hardworking farmers that populate the book. So while listeners will enjoy the beauty of her delivery, they will have to concentrate a bit harder than usual to find Willa Cather underneath. Y.R. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine