We, the youthful sinewy races–Pioneers!

All the past we leave behind;

We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,

Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers!

~Walt Whitman, “Pioneers, O Pioneers!”

I just finished O Pioneers! and it was one of the most inspiring, stirring books I’ve read in a long time. The words of the poem, when paired with the novel, illustrate a brave and confident group of people who took chances and paid prices for their dreams.

Alexandra Bergson is a dreamer; she inherits her father’s vision to farm the prairie land in which they live and turn from debt to profit. The novel spans about 30 years as it moves from her young adulthood into her 40s as strives to build a better life for her family after her father’s death. She especially sets stock in her youngest brother Emil, sending him off to college so that he does not have to be shackled to the land. But in trying to create a life, Alexandra doesn’t realize that she sometimes can be blind in matters of the heart.

I was deeply moved by this novel, because it was a touching and inspiring view of a woman’s dream to make her life better. Alexandra is a visionary, and I appreciated the risks she took, especially against her brothers’ conservative ideas of selling the farm and conforming to the lifestyles around them. Cather creates strong female protagonists, and Alexandra is one that I greatly admire.

Cather also discusses death in a way that is deeply stirring and beautiful, without being too sentimental. I won’t spoil it for you, but I teared up like mad. It’s really quite a beautiful novel.

Now: off to request My Antonia from the library!