Rating: 
Summary: Willa Cather is unique and brilliant
Review: The writing is simple, evocative and so emotionally direct that it can be breathtaking. I read My Antonia several years ago and was blown away by Cather's prose. I read O Pioneers through in one sitting and I hated to leave it. The characterizations ring true, our heroine Alexandra becomes real quickly as does her Nebraska world, her brothers and her friends. The emotional colors are delicately painted as we follow her through triumph and bitter loss to a simple and uncontrived "happy ending".
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Summary: An ode to the farmers of the American West
Review: The year after the Whartonesque (and unexceptional) "Alexander's Bridge," Cather published "O Pioneers!"--the book the she was in later years to call her second first novel. Although relatively brief, it unfolds like a frontier epic, and reading it now, it's hard to believe that Cather, living in Greenwich Village at the time, doubted whether anyone would be interested in the story of struggling Nebraskan farmers. As she wrote to a friend, with "this one I hit the home pasture and found that I was Yance Sorgeson [a rich farmer] and not Henry James."
"O Pioneers," for all its understated countrified charm, is not without the ingredients of a torrid drama: familial dispute, an adulterous affair, a double murder. The novel began its life as two stories, which Cather brilliantly melded into an ambitious whole. The first features Alexandra Bergson, who assumes proprietorship of her family's farm when her father dies, leaving her with three brothers. After several lean years, she nurtures the family estate, holding on to the land when many of her neighbors give up and return East. To insure the prosperity of her three siblings, Alexandra sacrifices her own comforts and passions--but never her independence. Yet the two older brothers first respect and then resent Alexandra's astute management--and they especially begrudge the favoritism she shows to their college-educated younger brother, Emil, whom she indulges with the goal of advancing him in the world beyond.
The second narrative concerns Emil and Marie Tovesky, who are childhood friends whose companionship flowers into romance after Marie marries the ornery, bitter, and somewhat mad Frank Shabata. If Alexandra's story provides the novel with its atmosphere and theme, the Emil-Marie story supplies the action and tension. Intermingled with these two storylines are depictions of rustic events and folksy characters (especially memorable is Ivar, a shaggy-haired, barefooted, back-to-nature eccentric).
Even a century later, "O Pioneers!" packs a wallop. But, more powerfully, it's an ode to the early settlers and to their struggle to survive. "The land belongs to the future," Alexandra remarks at the end. "We come and go, but the land is always there."
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Read
Review: This book is about a girl named Alexandra's struggle to support her family and take care of her deceased father's farm. It is somewhat of a love story between Alexandra's brother Emil and their neighbor Marie. I liked the hope that Alexandra had for the farm. When everyone else sold their land and advised her to, she had faith that her farm would prosper and that faith paid off. Willa Cather did a great job with the writing in this book. It was simple and not too drawn out yet it still gave good descriptions, giving a mental picture of the enviroment. If you like these types of stories, I recommend picking this book up.
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Summary: The Price of Keeping the Land
Review: This early Cather novel introduces readers to the majesty and the fury of the untamed prairie, when the mid west was yet Americca's frontier. It obliquely asks the question: How did the Land shape its people--mainly immigrants from Scandinavia, Bohemia and France--and how did the hopeful settlers, true Pioneers, shape and share the land? Who ultimately can ever own the prairie; can mere mortals seriously hold the undulating waves of grain in trust for future generations? Spanning some 17 years this gripping novel depicts the struggle to tame the midwest by a Swedish family, whose lives intertwine with those of their neighbors. Against hostile and unforgiving nature
the simple tale is spun out: a wise teenage girl inherits control of the family farm from her dying fathr, since she alone of his offspring understands the importance of retaining the land at all costs. Despite interferance by her resentful, short-sighted brothers, Alexandra does just that, revealing vison and determination beyond her years. For it is thus that she honors the memory of their father, keeping his faith in the ultimate
productivity o the savage land, when many neighbors sell out.
Creating strong female characters--of which the land itself or Mother Nature may be considered a shadowy one--Cather glowingly describes the rugged beauty of the mid west: rolling grasses,
powerful sunsets, intoxicating spring blossoms, with fluctuating, unpredictable weather. A farmer's life is an annual gamble, but then so is any pilgrimmage of the heart. Totally absorbed in running her successful farm, Alexandra does not look beneath the surface; she does not Notice things. Like the illicit love which blooms unbidden between her young brother, Emil, and Marie, the restless married woman next door. Add a wild, jealous husband into the equation and a volatile situation is inevitable.
Cather's style draws the reader directly into the mindset of her main characters. Recognizing the danger signs before Alexandra does, we tremble with the realization of future emotional turbulence. The author' use of color to help us visualize her beloved landscape is remarkable, but most of all we marvel that she depicts the countryside itself as a non-verbal player in the repetitive tale of human stories. In the end readers must decide for themselves who is most to blame for the tragedy--if guilt must be parceled out. Her grim theme, that Happiness is easier to lose than to find, taints the backdrop of timid hope. The furrows of her novel are plowed and scored with attempts of her characters to "possess a personality apart from the soil. " This seemingly agrarian novel is less about the effect so grains of seed in the ground, than about the grains of love sown in a desperate search for joy in the hearts of the pioneers. How can Love survive in a barren wilderness? A true classic of human striving and passion.
Rating:
Summary: ****Beautiful Lyrical Classic****
Review: Willa Cather is coming into vogue once again in no small part due to First Lady Laura Bush. Mrs. Bush hosted a symposium dedicated to "Women Authors of the American West." One of these authors was Willa Cather. I remember reading Cather in high school in the early 1960's and realizing she had a classical sytle. What a pleasure it was to pick up this book and rediscover her again. "Oh Pioneers" has the simplicity and beauty of the Nebraska plains it so well describes. The herione, Alexandra Bergon is as wholesome, strong, and simple as Nebraska wheat. Written in the days before television, video games, and the many corrupting factors of modern culture, this book is a hymn to the virtues of the pioneers who built our country. "Oh Pioneers is not a sanguine novel. There is death, drought, sickness, and thwarted love. But, utltimately there is also human triumph and hope embodied in Alexandra. She faces life with courage, dignity, and compassion. "Oh Pioneers" speaks to the heart. I highly recommend it.
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