Farm and family struggles in O Pioneers!

O Pioneers! is the second novel of Willa Cather’s I’ve read in this list of 100. Written many years before Death Comes for the Archbishop, it is a softer story but is still very moving. It tells the story of Alexandra Bergson, an independent strong-willed woman struggling to build a farm in rural Nebraska in the early part of the 20th century.

It starts when Alexandra is a young adult. Her father brought their family to the USA from Sweden to start a new life, and after struggling for years to get something to grow in the strange Nebraskan soil, he is dying. Alexandra is the eldest child and must now look after the farm and her three younger brothers. Brothers Lou and Oscar are similar in that they lack the foresight for grander schemes, and want to sell the land and settle on a smaller farm by the river where farming may be easier. Alexandra wants to further her father’s goal of the kids having a better life, so resists their efforts, while grooming youngest brother Emil to go to university one day and move on to bigger and better things. She puts her personal life on hold, keeping her only male friend Carl at a distance.

From these beginnings, the novel shoots forward from chapter to chapter. Sometimes a week or month will go by, sometimes years. Over time, Alexandra is able to turn her small farm into a sprawling plantation. Lou and Oscar still pine away for an easier life, Emil has gone to school and come back for a short time, deciding what to do next, and Carl is having is own adventures around the country, but always returning from time to time hoping Alexandra is ready to settle down with him. Emil ends up falling in love with Marie, a neighbor who is all ready married to a burly farmer named Frank. Emil struggles with his feelings, finally deciding to leave before anything comes of it, but when he goes to say good-bye, the two give in to their feelings. Frank finds them and shoots them both in a crime of passion. Alexandra’s hopes of Emil being the one sibling to go off to a new life are shattered, and she realizes that has been the big goal of her life, more than the farm or prosperity she has brought to the area. Now in her 40’s, she finally allows herself some personal comfort and agrees to marry Carl. She knows that no matter how hard she tries to hold on to something, whether it is Emil or the land, all things fade and time keeps moving on.

This is a quiet, unassuming, “little house on the prairie” kind of book, but a good one. In fact one of the more moving books I’ve read in a little while. Much of the book is told in dialogue, and the descriptive background writing is sometimes sparse, leaving much to the imagination. Cather does a fantastic job of writing just enough to give you a sense of the open land they live on and the life it holds there, and lets your mind fill in the rest. Alexandra is a different kind of feminist. She doesn’t stand on a soapbox shouting for equality, but she does her work quietly, as well as any man could, and doesn’t even listen when her brothers try to move her to do something she doesn’t think is right. An enjoyable, quick read.