O Pioneers! chronicles the life of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish-American immigrants living in the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska, at the turn of the twentieth century. Alexandra Bergson inherits her father's farmland upon his death, and she devotes her life to making the farm a viable enterprise at a time when many other immigrant families are abandoning the prairie. Additionally, the novel centers on two romantic relationships: one between Alexandra and family friend Carl Linstrum, and another between Alexandra's brother Emil and married Marie Shabata. O Pioneers! encapsulates both the stark physical realities and the mythic sweep of the American frontier's transformation—and that of the people who settled it.

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