O Pioneers! (Virago Modern Classics)

"She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring"

Alexandra is the eldest child of the Bergsons, a ship-building family from Sweden who have come to the American Midwest to wrest their living from another kind of frontier. Alexandra is driven by two great forces: her fierce protective love for her young brother Emil, and her deep love of the land. When her father dies, worn out by disease and debt, it is she who becomes the head of the family and begins the long, hard process of taming the country, forcing it to vield wheat and corn where only grass and wildflowers, had grown since time began.

Through the life, hopes, successes- and failures-of this magnificent woman we learn the story. of all the immigrants who came to carve out new homes for themselves, who struggled against ignorance, drought, storm, poverty and came to love and understand the earth until it rewarded them with richness beyond measure.

Willa Cather (1873-1947), one of the most important American writers of this century, was born in Virginia but moved to Nebraska at the age of eight. First published in 1913, this classic novel of early settlers in the vast golden prairies of the Midwest reveals her own abiding love for her native land.