Willa Cather

First published in 1922, "One of Ours" is Willa Cather's Pulitzer Prize winning story of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native at the turn of the 20th century. Claude is a young man who finds himself conflicted by the constraints of his overly pious mother and the demands that his father's farm places on his education and life. While attending Temple College, a Christian university, Claude befriends Julius Erlich, whose free-thinking family begins to change his perception of the world and his place in it. Abruptly Claude is called away from his education to help his father expand his farming operation. Soon he finds himself married to Enid Royce, a childhood friend. The disappointment of domesticated life and commitments to his family's farm leave Claude with a terrible sense of entrapment in a life of drudgery. When war breaks out in Europe, Claude sees an opportunity to escape and enlists in the U. S. Army. Willa Cather's "One of Ours" is a captivating tale of a changing American frontier at the beginning of the 20th century and the plight of one young man to deal with it. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

My ntonia (first published 1918) is considered the greatest novel by American writer Willa Cather. My ntonia - pronounced with the accent on the first syllable of " ntonia" - is the final book of the "prairie trilogy" of novels by Cather, a list that also includes O Pioneers and The Song of the Lark. My ntonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named ntonia

Set in the 1890s in Moonstone, a fictional town located in Colorado, The Song of the Lark is the self-portrait of an artist in the making. The story revolves around an ambitious young heroine, Thea Kronborg, who leaves her hometown to go to the big city to fulfill her dream of becoming a well-trained pianist, a better piano teacher. When her piano instructor hears her voice, he realizes that this is her true artistic gift. He encourages her to pursue her vocal training instead of piano saying ... "your voice is worth all that you can put into it. I have not come to this decision rashly." The novel captures Thea's independent-mindedness, her strong work ethic, and her ascent to her highest achievement. At each step along the way, her realization of the mediocrity of her peers propels her to greater levels of accomplishment, but in the course of her ascent she must discard those relationships which no longer serve her. (source: Wikipedia)

My Antonia tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, ntonia Shimerda, who are each brought to be pioneers in Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century, as children. ntonia must work as a servant on the farms of her neighbors after her father commits suicide. She elopes with a railway conductor but returns home and eventually becomes the patient and strong wife of a Bohemian farmer, Anton Cuzak, the mother of a large family and a typical woman of the pioneer West.

First published in 1913, "O Pioneers " is the first novel in Willa Cather's "Great Plains" trilogy. Followed by "The Song of the Lark" in 1915 and "My ntonia" in 1918, "O Pioneers " introduces us to the Bergsons, a family of Swedish-American immigrants who live in the fictional farm town of Hanover, Nebraska at the beginning of the 20th century. The story centers on the life of Alexandra Bergson, who inherits the family farm with her mother and three brothers when her father dies. Many years of crop failures force the Bergson's neighbors to give up and sell their farms, something that Alexandra's brothers Oscar and Lou wish to do but which Alexandra and her mother are unwilling to do. Instead Alexandra convinces the family to mortgage their homestead in order to buy up the surrounding acreage. Amidst the backdrop of managing the farm there develops two romantic relationships in the novel, one between Alexandra and her childhood friend Carl Linstrum, who returns after many years away, and another between Alexandra's youngest brother, Emil, and the unhappily married Marie Shabata. "O Pioneers " is a classic portrayal of the struggles of immigrants in the great plains of America, a story of success in the face of hardship, and the growth of a young woman along the way. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

The Song of the Lark is the third novel by American author Willa Cather, written in 1915. It is generally considered to be the second novel in Cather's Prairie Trilogy, following O Pioneers (1913) and preceding My ntonia (1918). The book tells the story of a talented artist born in a small town in Colorado who discovers and develops her singing voice. Her story is told against the backdrop of the burgeoning American West in which she was born in a town along the rail line, of fast-growing Chicago near the turn of the twentieth century, and of the audience for singers of her skills in the US compared to Europe. Thea Kronborg grows up, learning herself, her strengths and her talent, until she reaches success. The title comes from a painting of the same name by Jules Breton in 1884 and part of the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

O Pioneers is a 1913 novel by American author Willa Cather, written while she was living in New York. It is the first novel of her Great Plains trilogy, followed by The Song of the Lark (1915) and My ntonia (1918).