Willa Cather 
O Pioneers! 

When the Bergson family leave their home in Sweden to travel to the United States in search of a better life, they, like many immigrants, are awed by the beautiful harshness of their new life in Nebraska. When their father, John Bergson, grows sick and dies, he leaves the farm in the hands of his eldest daughter Alexandra Bergson. Resourceful and determined, Alexandra devotes her life to her family’s farm, determined to prosper even as her neighbors are overwhelmed by the unremitting demands of pioneer life. But when she falls in love with her childhood friend, Carl Linstrum, Alexandra must choose between her duty to the land, and to her heart.



A spirited celebration of the immigrants who have shaped the United States,  
O Pioneers! is a masterpiece by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. 

About the author

Willa Cather (1873–1947) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning American novelist and short story writer. Cather often thwarted convention in her writing, choosing to avoid traditional stories with romance and heroes in favor of complex, striving women whose marriages and loves are secondary to their striving. Her distinguished regionalist writing includes her Great Plains trilogy (
O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and
My Ántonia). Cather was survived by her long-time domestic partner and literary executor, Edith Lewis.