The whole country seemed somehow to be running

Willa Cather draws such a captivating picture of the tall grass prairie — the worlds contained in what looks like empty plain — before it was plowed under that I want to drive to Nebraska and see what remains of it, in the old cemeteries where the first homesteaders are buried.

“The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its somber wastes.”

I found O Pioneers! more satisfying than My Antonia, which I read years ago. We see Antonia through Jim Burden, and once he grows up, he makes her into an archetype: “a rich mine of life,” the raw, fertile land personified. We get Alexandra Bergson’s story unfiltered by anyone except her creator.

As much pleasure as O Pioneers! and My Antonia brought me, I could not get past the first chapters of Song of the Lark, the final installment of Cather’s prairie trilogy, set in Colorado.