Willa Cather

My Antonia by Willa Cather..... Classic LiteratureOrphaned Jim Burden rides the trains from Virginia to Black Hawk, Nebraska, where he will live with his paternal grandparents. Jake, a farmhand from Virginia, rides with the 10-year-old boy. On the same train, headed to the same destination, is the Shimerda family from Bohemia. Jim lives with his grandparents in the home they have built, helping as he can with chores to ease the burden on the others. The home has the dining room and kitchen downstairs, like a basement, with small windows at the top of the walls, an arrangement quite different from Jim's home in Virginia. The sleeping quarters and parlor are at ground level. The Shimerda family paid for a homestead which proves to have no home on it, just a cave in the earth, and not much of the land broken for cultivation. The two families are nearest neighbors to each other in a sparsely settled land. ntonia, the elder daughter in the Shimerda family, is a few years older than young Jim. The two are friends from the start, helped by Mrs. Shimerda asking that Jim teach both her daughters to read English. ntonia helps Mrs. Burden in her kitchen when she visits, learning more about cooking and housekeeping. The first year is extremely difficult for the Shimerda family, without a proper house in the winter. Mr. Shimerda comes to thank the Burdens for the Christmas gifts given to them, and has a peaceful day with them, sharing a meal and the parts of a Christian tradition that Protestant Mr. Burden and Catholic Mr. Shimerda respect. He did not want to move from Bohemia, where he had a skilled trade, a home and friends with whom he could play his violin. His wife is sure life will be better for her children in America.

Willa Cather's One of Ours (1922) may have won a Pulitzer Prize, but it remains one of her most controversial novels. What, her critics ask, does a woman know about war? Inspired by the death of her cousin G. P. Cather in the fighting of WWI, Cather traces the trajectory of protagonist Claude Wheeler from Nebraska farmer to U. S. soldier. Based on G. P.'s own letters and Cather's meticulous research, One of Ours asks readers to confront the harsh realities of war through Claude's experiences. Joining the army allows Claude to escape his bitter life, but what he finds in war is no less disappointing.

Willa Sibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My ntonia (1918). In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I.

My ntonia, published in 1918, is the most famous work of American novelist Willa Cather. The novel takes the form of a fictional memoir written by Jim Burden about an immigrant girl named ntonia with whom he grew up in the American West. Cather, like her character Jim, moved to Nebraska when she was ten years old, and she bases many of the events, characters, and settings of the novel on her own childhood experiences. The novel forms a sort of "trilogy" with two other prairie novels by Cather, O Pioneers (1913) and The Song of the Lark (1915). For its time and context, My ntonia pushed the boundaries of traditional literature. First, its narrative structure is mainly built from episodes and anecdotes rather than a continuous storyline - Cather thinks nothing of jumping twenty years ahead in between chapters. For this reason, the novel is sometimes considered a modernist work (see "Genre" for more). My ntonia also blurs gender barriers. To begin, the novel is written by a woman but told through the eyes of a male narrator. Additionally, the characters in the story break from stereotypical gender roles - the women are strong, athletic, and active, while the men are generally passive and weak. Interestingly, while studying at the University of Nebraska, Cather herself used to wear men's clothing and go by the name "William." Cather was also nontraditional in her choice of subject matter. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Cather chose to write about everyday people in the American West. My ntonia focuses on the lives and concerns of average Nebraskans, including European immigrants - the kind of people that Cather grew up around. As a result, the novel provides modern readers a glimpse into the lives of the early white settlers of the American West.

Willa Cather's 1935 novel drew on her lifelong interest in music, which plays a transformative role in the lives of her characters. Cather's last novel set in the Great Plains tells the story of young Lucy Gayheart, who escapes life in small-town Haverford, Nebraska, in 1902 to pursue a career in music. In Chicago she falls in love with an older singer, Clement Sebastian, who finds renewed inspiration in her. However, tragic chance destroys their ensuing love affair. The novel has evoked divergent responses among critics and readers ever since its publication. This Willa Cather Scholarly Edition includes a historical essay providing fresh insight into the novel, the role of music, and Cather's writing process. It also features photographs, maps, and explanatory notes with a full range of biographical, historical, and cultural information. The textual editing of the novel, approved by the Committee on Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association, draws on corrected typescripts and proofs and presents a clean, authoritative text of the first edition.

Bartley Alexander is slowly being buried alive, unable to bridge the gap between his successful life and the freedom he thought success would bring. An important career, a caring wife, a lovely home--these just aren't enough for Bartley. Torn between duty and desire, he realizes too late that when you flirt with disaster, disaster might just flirt back. Originally published in 1912, Alexander's Bridge is Willa Cather's first novel.