Unter den Hügeln die kommende Zeit (1913)

What a beautiful book! It's hard to believe it was written over 100 years ago - it has a very modern sensibility.

The main character Alexandra emigrated from Sweden with her family at a young age. Alexandra's father dies a few years after settling the family on a homestead in Nebraska. As he's dying, the father realizes Alexandra has more business and practical sense than her brothers, so he leaves the farm in her care.

The remaining family has good times and bad times financially. They also experience both joy and tragedies. Throughout the book there's a feeling on not quite fatalism - more of a feeling that everything that happens is just as it should be. Even terrible events.

I love reading a classic like this and discovering why it's considered "classic". ( )

Summary: The first of the Great Plains Trilogy, the story of Alexandra Bergson’s love of the Nebraska hills, the costly choices she made, and the ill-fated love of her brother Emil.

I’ve only recently discovered Willa Cather, and realized that I have missed reading one of America’s great writers. This work, the first volume in the Great Plains Trilogy centers around Alexandra Bergstrom, a strong, red-haired woman. As she helped her dying father, it became clear that she and not her two older brothers, truly understood how to make the farm succeed that he had labored so hard to establish in the hills of Nebraska. When he died, she took over its management. When her brothers wanted to sell the farm during the drought, she went to see the river land they wanted to move to, and returned to propose that they mortgage the farm to add to the lands, her faith being so strong. In one of the pivotal passages of the book, Cather writes of her:

"For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of geologic ages, a human face was set toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious. Her eyes drank in the breadth of it, until her tears blinded her. Then the Genius of the Divide, the great, free spirit which breathes across it, must have bent lower than it ever bent to a human will before. The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman" (Cather, p. 44).

Under her love, the expanded farm prospers, she buys out her brothers who acquire their own land. With old Ivar, who the brothers want to commit, and farmworkers and young girls to help, the fields, orchards, and stock flourish. But she is growing older, alone. Her one male friend from childhood, Carl Linstrum, his parents having sold the farm to Alexandra, has gone off to seek his fortune, and yet never finds it, secretly struggling to live up to Alexandra’s accomplishments, little realizing that this was not what she wanted.

Sadly, Alexandra also fails to recognize the yearnings drawing together her friend Marie, trapped in an unhappy marriage and her beloved youngest brother Emil, for whom she hoped so much. She sends Emil to help Marie in her troubles, little suspecting the attraction she is helping to fuel. One wonders if she fails to see the desires in others that she had suppressed in herself for so long.

One of the other things Cather captures is the ethnic diversity, each with their own settlements-the Norwegians, the French, the Bohemians, and the intersections between them at festivals, churches and daily life. Each has stereotypes of the others but also friendships, like that between Emil and Amedee, or Alexandra and Marie. Slowly, these different migrants are brought together but the challenges of Nebraska’s upland prairies.

I was also taken by the many descriptions of the land–the paths they walked, the pond where Emil shot the ducks with Marie by his side (a scene pregnant with foreshadowing), the rainstorm that clarified Alexandra’s grief and resolve, and the white mulberry tree. Amid all this, and dominating the whole is the strong character of Alexandra whose love of the land, shrewdness of character, generosity of friendship, and ultimately, a forgiveness that transcends grief makes her one of the great characters of American literature. ( )

Loved the 1st half - the struggle with the land and the character Alexandra Bergson. Not so much the doomed love story of the 2nd half... ( )

Beautifully written and a thorough joy to read. While I started out comparing it to My Antonia, there is a different quality to it and character of Alexandra is more fully explored. There is a quietness and depth to her that I found so compelling. I did not expect the final tragedies until they were sadly inevitable but the whole novel was just a small brilliant gem. Yes, The Song of the Lark remains my favorite but this is very close.

At first glance, this read is a pleasant story; but like the rain, it sinks in and thoughts and understanding begin to grow. This could be the story of many of my ancestors. It could be the story of the independent women who settled the wild land and men. It could be the story of repression endured, of the strength of love, and the agony of failure. So many undercurrents are in this tale, as in life. It was a pleasant story, though it dealt with heartache, failure and depression. It is a love song to the land, and those who love the land. ( )