Publisher's Synopsis
O Pioneers was Willa Cather's second published novel. Like My Àntonia, written a few years later, it consists of a series of closely narrated episodes that span a period of years. Like many other turn-of-the-century prarie story-tellers, Cather wrote this novel at some distance from the novel's setting; in her case, she was in New York, but her memories of the western Nebraska prairie were still crisp and vivid. Superficially a tale of immigrant farmers, the novel features Cather's memorable line, "there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before." The novel's continued resonance with those who live outside the prairie realms it is set in testifies to the truth of that statement.
