One of Ours
Willa Cather,
eBook
(Heritage Books, Sept. 1, 2019)
One of Ours is a novel by Willa Cather that won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. It tells the story of the life of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native around the turn of the 20th century. The son of a successful farmer and an intensely pious mother, he is guaranteed a comfortable livelihood. At age 9 Cather moved with her family from Virginia to frontier Nebraska, where from age 10 she lived in the village of Red Cloud. There she grew up among the immigrants from EuropeâSwedes, Bohemians, Russians, and Germansâwho were breaking the land on the Great Plains.Meet extraordinary women who dared to bring gender equality and other issues to the forefront. From overcoming oppression, to breaking rules, to reimagining the world or waging a rebellion, these women of history have a story to tell.At the University of Nebraska she showed a marked talent for journalism and story writing, and on graduating in 1895 she obtained a position in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on a family magazine. Later she worked as copy editor and music and drama editor of the Pittsburgh Leader. She turned to teaching in 1901 and in 1903 published her first book of verses, April Twilights. In 1905, after the publication of her first collection of short stories, The Troll Garden, she was appointed managing editor of McClureâs, the New York muckraking monthly. After building up its declining circulation, she left in 1912 to devote herself wholly to writing novels.Catherâs first novel, Alexanderâs Bridge (1912), was a factitious story of cosmopolitan life. Under the influence of Sarah Orne Jewettâs regionalism, however, she turned to her familiar Nebraska material. With O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ăntonia (1918), which has frequently been adjudged her finest achievement, she found her characteristic themesâthe spirit and courage of the frontier she had known in her youth. One of Ours (1922), which won the Pulitzer Prize, and A Lost Lady (1923) mourned the passing of the pioneer spirit.In her earlier Song of the Lark (1915), as well as in the tales assembled in Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920), including the much-anthologized âPaulâs Case,â and Lucy Gayheart (1935), Cather reflected the other side of her experienceâthe struggle of a talent to emerge from the constricting life of the prairies and the stifling effects of small-town life.