Back log - "C" is for Cather

O Pioneers!


When I see the prairie again I feel like I should stand on top of a hill and shout that. I chose Willa Cather's "O Pioneers" for my C book because I had never read Cather before and had seen her titles come up in many a "classics" or "recommended" reading list. Ultimately I chose "O Pioneers" because though many of her novels are about trail blazing women and the prairie I thought from the summaries I read that this book combined the two the best and it did.

RED ALERT **** SOME SPOILERS AHEAD**** I tried to keep it minimal this time.

This book was a good one but a short one. I think i read it in about a week, and that would have gone even faster if I read more than a chapter or two a night. I would have to say her writing is nothing if not concise but I don't think the setting lacked for detail at all. As I was reading I definitely felt that I could clearly imagine the high plains of Nebraska during its first settlements with pioneers lonely, confused, and frustrated breaking their backs to make something of the land of tall grasses that just goes on and on for miles. Quite frankly sometimes her descriptions were rather eerie and leaving me feeling unsettled.

O Pioneers! is about a family of Scandinavian (now I can't remember if they were Norwegian or Swedish, shame on me) pioneers. They were successful shipbuilders in the old country (I want to say Sweden but Im not sure if thats because Im biased that way) who come to Nebraska to farm.

The main character of the book is Alexandra, who is all around bad ass. The book follows her building the farm, and her family, with the help of her brothers. Note, with the help of her brothers. She is definitely the leader and the one who makes things happen. Yet, a big part of the book, is that this strength puts her in a vulnerable position for the times. On the one hand, being a pioneer in the Nebraska plains allows her some freedoms - when everyone is struggling to make it people aren't going to be as particular about a woman acting out of order, being in charge of her family and the finances. However, she still has to play this part very carefully politically, making sure her brothers on are board with her, because they can support her just as easily as bring her down.

However, I really view this whole "farm building" thing as the back drop for the love stories in this book. Alexandra for a good part of her life denies herself (in some ways) of having any relationships outside of nurturing her family. I LOVED Alexandra and her much younger brother, Emil's relationship.

Another interesting plot was the "culture" clashes that were happening on the Plains. For some reason, it never occurred to me that back in the day, we didn't have racial lines to divide ourselves, and instead it was ethnicity, by way of which country your family recently came from, and though a lot of these cultural practices aren't around anymore, at the time there were huge differences between how the Swedes and the Czechs lived.

I enjoyed this book, even though it ended rather tragically. I much prefer happy endings (sorry, its simplistic but real life is tragic enough for me) and demand them when it comes to television but even though this book was filled with a lot of hardship and a few tragedies I still enjoyed it, in its own austere way.