O Pioneers: Settling the Frontier
About this audiobook
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. The main street was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain “elevator” at the north end of the town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end. On either side of this road straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings; the general merchandise stores, the two banks, the drug store, the feed store, the saloon, the post-office. The board sidewalks were gray with trampled snow, but at two o’clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers, having come back from dinner, were keeping well behind their frosty windows.
About the author
One of the great American writers of the twentieth century, Willa Cather (1873-1947) enjoyed distinguished careers as a journalist, editor, and fiction writer. She is most often thought of as a chronicler of the pioneer American West. Cather's fiction is characterized by a strong sense of place, the subtle presentation of human relationships, an often unconventional narrative structure, and a style of clarity and beauty. Willa was born on December 7, 1873, in Back Creek Valley, Virginia. In 1883, the Cather family moved to Nebraska, where her father opened a loan and insurance office. Willa attributed the family's lack of financial success to her father, whom she claimed placed intellectual and spiritual matters over those of the business. Her mother was a vain woman, mostly concerned with fashion and trying to turn Willa into "a lady," despite the fact that Willa defied the norms for girls, cutting her hair short and wearing trousers. After graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1895, Willa was offered a position editing Home Monthly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While editing the magazine, she wrote short stories to fill its pages, including a collection called "The Troll Garden" in 1905, which caught the attention of S. S. McClure. The following year, Willa moved to New York to join the editorial staff of McClure's Magazine. She eventually became managing editor and saved the magazine from financial disaster. After the publication of "Alexander's Bridge" in 1912, she left McClure's and devoted herself to creative writing. A year later, Willa published her bestseller O Pioneers!-a celebration of the strength and courage of the frontier settlers. Other well-known novels with this theme are My Ántonia and the Pulitzer Prize-winning One of Ours. Willa's prolific success lead to a period of despair, but after she recovered, she wrote some of her greatest novels, including The Professor's House, My Mortal Enemy, and Death Comes for the Archbishop. She maintained an active writing career, publishing novels and short stories for many years until her death on April 24, 1947.
John Rayburn is a veteran broadcaster. He served as a news/sports anchor and show host, and his TV newscast achieved the largest Share of Audience figures of any major-market TV newscast in the nation. John is a member of a Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame.
