On the lookout for stock images of the American frontier? You know, covered wagons, cowboys, shootouts? Well, check out one of these films.

But if you're looking for a story about the American West that really goes for the good stuff—the frontier way of life—then step right up to Willa Cather's 1913 novel, O Pioneers! By the end of this classic, you'll have an idea of the human experience on the frontier, in a drama that plays out between an unforgiving land and its tenacious settlers.

In O Pioneers!, which gets its title from an 1865 poem by Walt Whitman, the American West comes at us chock-full of symbolism. At the same time, though, the depictions of frontier life are realistic and specific to this author. See, Willa Cather grew up on the Nebraskan Great Plains, in surroundings that inspired the setting of O Pioneers! The book is really an ode to this stark landscape and the sturdy folks who call it home.

O Pioneers! tells the story of the Bergson family, Swedish immigrants with a farm on the highland prairies of Nebraska, a region known in the novel as "the Divide." Now, there's no shortage of romance and tragedy in O Pioneers! But if we look closely, the human stories in the novel often seem overshadowed by the drama of the land itself. Alexandra, the novel's heroine, doesn't just own land; she belongs to it. Her character easily merges into something that is bigger than herself, grander than her desires, property or individualism.

Have no fear—we'll have a lot more to say about this in Alexandra's "Character Analysis." But if you still can't get enough of Willa Cather, then we have some good news for you: there's more, much more where this comes from. In fact, O Pioneers! is just the first book in Cather's "Prairie Trilogy," which includes her other novels, The Song of the Lark and My Ántonia. 

There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like…

… Nebraska?

We admit: it's easy to give Nebraska a hard time. Like the Kansas of everyone's favorite, ruby slipper-wearing heroine, Nebraska has a pretty humble place in the American imagination. Ask most people, and they'll tell you that Nebraska is the epitome of flat, gray, Midwestern boringness. Oh, and something about the Oregon Trail.

Yeah—not exactly the best place to spend your next Spring Break.

If you're at all like us, though (by which we mean awesome), then you'll know that first impressions don't get you very far in the world of literature. While Nebraska might not sound like all that jazz, back in 1913, when Willa Cather wrote O Pioneers!, it was the living legacy of the Wild West. Nebraska was once the frontier in its prime, and Willa Cather is one of the greatest champions of this state's rugged beauty and devoted citizens.

All the same, the people in O Pioneers! often long to break free from the land, to see the world beyond the Great Plains. In the end, though, the novel's heroine rediscovers her love of the prairie. She concludes that her heart can belong to the land, and she can still free to be herself. Now, that's a nice American Dream—but how free is Alexandra? Could her sense of belonging to the land mask a refusal to confront all her dreams and desires?

Well, fellow explorers of Shmoop, we invite you to look for your own answers to these questions. In the end, they're not so different from questions we ask today about American identity, personal freedom and what it means to call a country home.

So, hitch your wagons and hold onto your bonnets, because it's time to say: O Pioneers!