A Book Set in Nebraska
State: Nebraska
Author: Willa Cather
Year Published: 1918
Genre: Historical Fiction
My reading through all fifty U.S. states for the semiquincentennial continues with my very first Willa Cather novel. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but I was happy to find myself hooked from the opening page. Cather’s writing captures perfectly the place and time of her story (which makes sense as she is writing about the place and time that she herself grew up in), and it gave me that supremely satisfying feeling that I get when I’m reading a classic I enjoy. The novel begins in the 1880s on the plains of Nebraska with a particular focus on an immigrant family from Bohemia. I loved learning about the immigrants from different northern European countries (different from those that settled the American south where I’m from) and what life was like on the prairie. The story is at times beautiful and at times tragic, and I am looking forward to reading more Willa Cather.
“As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea.”