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Learn more"The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman," writes Willa Cather in O Pioneers! The country is America; the woman is Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent young Swedish immigrant girl who inherits her father's farm in Nebraska. A model of emotional strength, courage, and resolve, Alexandra fights long and hard to transform her father's patch of raw, wind-blasted prairie into a highly profitable business.
A gripping saga of love, murder, greed, failure, and triumph, O Pioneers! vividly portrays the hardships of prairie life. Above all, it champions the belief that hard work is the surest road to personal fulfillment. Described upon publication in the New York Times as "American in the best sense of the word," O Pioneers! celebrates the men and women who struggled to build a nation that is both compelling and contradictory.
One of the great American writers of the twentieth century, Willa Cather (1873-1947) enjoyed distinguished careers as a journalist, editor, and fiction writer. She is most often thought of as a chronicler of the pioneer American West. Cather's fiction is characterized by a strong sense of place, the subtle presentation of human relationships, an often unconventional narrative structure, and a style of clarity and beauty. Willa was born on December 7, 1873, in Back Creek Valley, Virginia. In 1883, the Cather family moved to Nebraska, where her father opened a loan and insurance office. Willa attributed the family's lack of financial success to her father, whom she claimed placed intellectual and spiritual matters over those of the business. Her mother was a vain woman, mostly concerned with fashion and trying to turn Willa into "a lady," despite the fact that Willa defied the norms for girls, cutting her hair short and wearing trousers. After graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1895, Willa was offered a position editing Home Monthly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While editing the magazine, she wrote short stories to fill its pages, including a collection called "The Troll Garden" in 1905, which caught the attention of S. S. McClure. The following year, Willa moved to New York to join the editorial staff of McClure's Magazine. She eventually became managing editor and saved the magazine from financial disaster. After the publication of "Alexander's Bridge" in 1912, she left McClure's and devoted herself to creative writing. A year later, Willa published her bestseller O Pioneers!-a celebration of the strength and courage of the frontier settlers. Other well-known novels with this theme are My รntonia and the Pulitzer Prize-winning One of Ours. Willa's prolific success lead to a period of despair, but after she recovered, she wrote some of her greatest novels, including The Professor's House, My Mortal Enemy, and Death Comes for the Archbishop. She maintained an active writing career, publishing novels and short stories for many years until her death on April 24, 1947.
Kate Reading is an Audie Award-winning narrator who has recorded hundreds of titles in many genres. She has received numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, in addition to being named Narrator of the Year and Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. She has been recognized as Reader of the Year by Publishers Weekly and has appeared on Booklist's 2019 Top of the List for the American Library Association. She and her husband, narrator Michael Kramer, record at their home studio in Maryland, Madison Productions.