O Pioneers!

MP3 Audio CD. First published in 1913, Willa Cather?s O Pioneers! is the first part of the author?s well-known Prairie Trilogy ? a series of three books that have no characters or specific locations in common, the only feature that links the three stories together being the principal theme, the life of people on the Great Plains.

The story starts in 1880 and it introduces the Bergsons, a family of emigrants from Sweden who have come to the region in Nebraska known as the Divide to farm a plot of land. The soil in the area is not really suitable for farming and when the head of the family dies and leaves the task of running to farm to his daughter, Alexandra, the young woman is faced with a dilemma: should she stay on the land and hope her efforts and her hard work will be rewarded, or sell the farm, like her neighbors, and hope for an easier livelihood? She makes the difficult decision eventually and she makes her choice when it comes to marrying the man she loves as well.

O Pioneers! is a naturalist novel with lots of beautiful descriptions of landscapes, but the focus is on human relationships. The landscapes, the descriptions of the farming procedures are combined with psychological insight in a masterful way. The Midwest prairies, the hard life of the settlers in the region provide excellent circumstances for creating complex characters and it is not only the character of Alexandra that is multi-colored and detailed, but all the other characters as well, male and female alike. The two other parts in the trilogy are The Song of the Lark, published in 1915, and My Antonia,which came out in 1918 ? if you loved this wonderful story, you will surely like Willa Cather?s other masterpieces as well.