O Pioneers! And Other Tales of the Prairie, by Willa Cather

This collection contains three works by Willa Cather: The Bohemian Girl (1912), O Pioneers! (1913), and A Lost Lady (1923). They all have the prairie (in Nebraska) as background, and tell the stories of three women, one struggling against the neighboring dumb farmers, one fighting and conquering the wild, and one elegant lady who had once been a most lovely scene in that wild land.

The Bohemian Girl (1912) was one of Cather's earliest works. Cather seemed to put most story elements in this novella, but as said in my previous post, Cather failed to produce and deliver a unique and sharp story, and its language was weak.

In O Pioneers! (1913), we can clearly see the unique name tag of Willa Cather. This is a successful work. Cather was able to tell her story (but not much on her thoughts) clearly and sharply. However, the language was plain and the way that the plots are presented was simple and straightforward. Cather's the other novel, My Antonia (1918), probably her best-known work, was telling a similar story, but in a much more artistic way.

The novella The Lost Lady (1923) is a triumph. Cather was now a master in words and story telling. Her new focus seemed to be on delivering her thoughts beyond plots. She succeeded in balancing the weights of stories and ideas, making it a fun reading and, at the same time, so rich that you want to read it again later.

This fine collection was produced by The New York Public Library in 1998, and published by DoubleDay. ISBN 0385487207.