One of Ours

by Willa Cather Narrated by James Harrington

Overview

Willa Cather (1873-1947) was awarded the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for this stirring novel about World War I. She brings to life the simple Nebraska farm folk and their tranquil rural lifestyle, showing how the Great War, seemingly so far away on the Old Continent, eventually touches them all. Protagonist Claude Wheeler, a strong, healthy farm boy, is physically typical of his sturdy sodbuster family and hard-working neighbors. But mentally the boy has little in common with their narrow outlooks, and the limited horizons of his parochial community make him restless and filled with a barely suppressed discontent. When the United States finally enters the conflict in Europe, Claude is one of the first to enlist, seeing purpose, adventure, and commitment to some larger ideals in the call to arms. One of Ours is a memorable testament to the shattering effects of war on youth and ideals, a powerful depiction of mechanized battle and the war's life-changing effects on one Nebraska farm boy and the people he left behind.

Editorial Reviews

Marina Warner

An astonishing power to touch an elegiac note right on the nerve without sentimentality.”

Guardian (London)

The thing about Willa Cather’s landscape and figures is that not only were they born alive but remain so after six decades.”

From the Publisher

"Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together."

"Women ought to be religious; faith was the natural fragrance of their minds. The more incredible the things they believed, the more lovely was the act of belief. To him the story of "Paradise Lost" was as mythical as the "Odyssey"; yet when his mother read it aloud to him, it was not only beautiful but true. A woman who didn't have holy thoughts about mysterious things far away would be prosaic and commonplace, like a man."

"Every morning the sun came up a red ball, quickly drank the dew, and started a quivering excitement in all living things."

"The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took it's due from all animal energy. When it flung wide it's cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and exhausted world."

― Willa Cather, One of Ours

Product Details

BN ID:	2940193434153
Publisher:	Interactive Media
Publication date:	10/29/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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