O pioneers (Penguin Books)

The first novel in the Great Plains trilogy, this is an ode to the American Midwest and the immigrants who transformed it. To the anger of her brothers, it is Alexandra who is entrusted to manage their family farm in the tough, hostile prairie of Hanover, Nebraska following the death of their father.

As the years pass, Alexandra rises heroically to the challenge, finding strength in the savage beauty of the land even as loneliness and personal tragedies crowd in. A rapturous work of understated lyricism, Willa Cather's 1913 tale of a pioneer woman who tames the wild, hostile lands of the Nebraskan prairie is also the story of what it means to be American.