O Pioneers is a novel written by Willa Sibert Cather in 1903. In this book, Cather unfolds the story of Bergson, are Swedish-American immigrant in the farm country near the town of Hanover, Nebraska.Alexandra Bergson is the leading character of the story; she inherits the family farmland when her father dies. She devotes her life in making the farm an enterprise when other immigrant families are leaving the prairie.The story also revolves around the relationship between Alexandra and her family friend Carl Linstrum and Alexandra's brother Emil and the married Marie Shabata.O Pioneers is divided into five parts.Alexandra's father is dying. His last wish is that his daughter runs the farm after he is gone. The story showcases the struggles of Alexandra and how she mortgages the farm to buy more land in the hope to become rich as a landowner.Although, Alexandra gets financial success but fails in her love life. Carl Linstrum leaves Alexandra and lives in a different city. After 16 years he makes a surprise visit to her. Lou and Oscar are married and they both hold their separate farms. Also, things started getting nasty between Emil, Alexandra's favorite youngest brother, and Marie Shabata. Later, Emil decides the best thing for him is to get away.
Willa Sibert Cather was a famous American writer known for her substantial novels. She was born in 1873 in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. Her father's name was Charles Fectigue Cather and belonged from Wales. Her mother's name was Mary Virginia Boak, and she was a former school teacher. When Cather was twelve months old, her parents moved to Willow Shade, a Greek Revival-style home given to them by her paternal grandparents. Willa Cather has six siblings namely Roscoe, Douglass, Jessica, James, John, and Elsie. She was close to her brothers compared to her sisters. She graduated from Red Cloud High School in 1890. To enroll at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she later moved to Lincoln. In 1896, she moved to Pittsburgh where she worked as a writer in a women's magazine, Home Monthly. A year later, she became a telegraph editor and critic for the Pittsburgh Leader and frequently contributed poetry and short fiction to The Library. She also started teaching Latin, algebra, and English in Pittsburgh for a year. During World War I in 1923, she got a Pulitzer Prize for the novel One of Ours.
