The novels O Pioneers! The Song of the Lark and My Ántonia made Willa Cather's reputation and
though published separately are now studied together as Willa Cather's Great Plains Trilogy.
These three novels set in Nebraska and Colorado cemented Cather's reputation in the early
1920s as a writer who exalted the lives of ordinary people. Together these novels portray the
magnificent prairie landscape and the indomitable spirit of the men and women who inhabited
and adapted to its harsh beauty: My Ántonia: The intertwined stories of Jim Burden an orphan
from Virginia and the elder daughter in a family of Czech immigrants Ántonia Shimerda who
are each brought to Nebraska as children. O Pioneers!: The Bergsons move from Sweden and
struggle to carve out a living on their Nebraska homestead. The eldest daughter Alexandra
inherits the farm when her father dies and devotes her life to its success even as other
immigrant families leave the prairie defeated. The Song of the Lark: Thea Kronborg grows up in
a small Colorado town next to the railroad that connects her to a wider world a world she
will conquer with her glorious voice and strength of will.
