One of Ours

Willa Cather won the Pulitzer Prize for this story of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska farmer’s son who cannot name the thing missing from his life. He has land, an education, and a marriage, yet each feels like a door closing rather than opening. Restless and half-formed, Claude drifts through the routines of the prairie until the First World War pulls him overseas and hands him, at last, a cause worth his whole self. Cather drew on the letters of a cousin killed in France, and the novel wrestles honestly with whether war can redeem a wasted life or only disguise the waste. Written in her clear, unhurried prose, it is both a portrait of rural America and a hard question about idealism. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.