Showing results by author "Willa Cather" in All Categories

Life on the divide was a struggle for the pioneering Bergson family. Alexandra, both tough as nails and tender as a budding blossom, faces and conquers the harsh realities of early settlers in Nebraska. The struggle for life, love, and meaning permeate this timeless classic. Willa Cather captures the imagination with her vivid portrayals of the landscape and the enduring desire to achieve a dream.

O Pioneers! is a 1913 novel by Willa Cather, the first of her “prairie trilogy” of novels. It tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish immigrants in the farm country near the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska, at the turn of the 20th century. The protagonist, Alexandra Bergson, inherits the family farm when her father dies, and devotes her life to making the farm a success at a time when many other families are giving up and leaving the land.

Sadness can be about so many things from places to people, from thoughts to actions. Our classic authors including Arnold Bennett, James Joyce, Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad, Ivan Turgenev and many others use their pens and stories to demonstrate the many ways this feeling can take a hold of lives and its consequences.

In the late 1800's, Bishop Jean Marie Latour and Vicar Joseph Vaillant are assigned to travel to the newly founded territory of New Mexico in order to establish a religious diocese there. Their year-long journey exposes them to many hardships and dangers. It also brings them in contact with a variety of individuals–priests (both good and bad), poor people who live on the edge of starvation and one Kit Carson.

Thea Kronborg, gifted and passionate, struggles to leave the confines and constraints of a small Colorado town in order to move to a major metropolis and achieve an operatic career.

In this haunting 1935 novel, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of My Ántonia performs crystalline variations on the themes that preoccupy her greatest fiction: the impermanence of innocence, the opposition between prairie and city, provincial American values and world culture, and the...

In "The Song of the Lark," we follow the life of budding artist Thea Kronbog, who rises from complete obscurity in a tiny Colorado town to become a world-renowned opera singer. A fascinating look at life in the early 20th century as well as a deep dive into the life and struggles of a creative artist rising to the top of her profession, "The Song of the Lark" was universally praised for its realism and meticulous depiction of Thea's journey. One of the most important and powerful novels of the early 20th century, "The Song of the Lark" is presented here in its original and unabridged format.

My Ántonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named Ántonia. The book’s narrator, Jim Burden, arrives in the fictional town of Black Hawk, Nebraska, on the same train as the Shimerdas, as he goes to live with his grandparents after his parents have died. Jim develops strong feelings for Ántonia, something between a crush and a filial bond, and the reader views Ántonia’s life, including its attendant struggles and triumphs, ...

Catch the holiday spirit with this magical collection of beloved Christmas tales. Christmas favorites from L.M. Montgomery, O. Henry, Willa Cather, Hans Christian Anderson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bret Harte and Anthony Trollope are lovingly recorded and presented here in one enchanting volume.

When we read or listen, words can have a transforming effect. Our mood can alter in the space of a few sentences from joy to sadness. And not just our mood. These words can affect us physically, they can engage our emotions and even in their sadness bring a lump to our throat and tears to our eyes. Sometimes the relief can be palpable. Our authors, from Anton Chekhov, Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Katherine Mansfield and a wealth of others, are well aware of what their talents will evoke. Genius has many names.

Claude Wheeler resembles the youngest son of an American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It is only when his country enters the First World War that Claude finds what he has been searching for all his life.

These treasured stories from the most influential authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries are selected for their literary importance as well as their dramatic, oral qualities. Listen to these 10 unabridged classics by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, O. Henry, and Willa Cather.

In the American Civil War that began in 1861 the War was seemingly fought to end Slavery. A War for Good. The result a win for the good guys but a society that still bears fractures from this seminal period. The stories in this volume show the true scars that are endured as a riven Nations authors try to explain and reconcile.

The most romantic literary lovers in history: Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. Oliver Mellors and Constance Chatterley. Marie Shabata and Emil Bergson. Now, all three of their classic stories are collected in one volume.

One January day, many years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them.

r the death of his parents, Jim was sent to live with his grandparents in Black Hawk Nebraska. There he befriended Antonia, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants. Years later, Jim, now a successful lawyer in New York, returns to his childhood home and Antonia. Jim's love for Antonia has endured, much as she herself has endured tragic circumstances.

Willa Cather renders the tough inner terrain of a man in mid-life crisis. Bartley Alexander is a master bridge engineer. At 43 he is at the height of his power, comfortable with success and all it brings. Yet he yearns for the lost vibrancy of his youth. He leads a double life, veering between his beautiful, accomplished wife and his mistress, an actress he knew as a student in Paris. The conflict creates a crack in the structure of his life that ultimately undermines him.

Marian Forrester arrives in Sweet Water as the treasured bride of a retired builder. To her husband she embodies the idealism of this railroad town on the Western plains. And to Niel Herbert, a smitten young local boy, she’s so perfect as to belong to a different world. But as Niel comes of age, the fortunes of Sweet Water decline, and as the promise of the frontier fades, his perception of the fallible woman he has idolized since boyhood is shattered.

In this semiautobiographical portrait of a young artist, Willa Cather takes us into the heart of a woman coming to know her deepest self. Thea Kronborg, a minister’s daughter in a provincial Colorado town, has dreams and gifts that her hometown will not satisfy. With the support of a few allies who recognize her rare qualities, she follows her ambitions to the city, determined to be an opera diva. As she moves through a series of music teachers in Chicago, Thea finds that the attitudes and standards of those around her rarely match her own.

The Bergsons, a Swedish family of settlers in Nebraska, battle drought and other disasters in an effort to establish a foothold in this new land.