14 h 20 minAudiobook12 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the life that gives you everything you need leaves you hungry for a reason to live?
In Willa Cather’s One of Ours, Claude Wheeler grows up on a prosperous Nebraska farm, restless among people who cannot understand his longing. His father, Nat Wheeler, sees success in land and business. Claude hopes that learning, friendship, and marriage to Enid Royce will open a door to a richer life.
Then America enters the First World War, and Claude hears a call that seems to answer his restless hopes. His journey carries him from the prairie toward France, where new friendships and unfamiliar lives widen his world. Cather explores the painful tension between a young man’s hunger for purpose and the deadly experience that seems to offer it.
What you’ll discover
- A life beyond comfort Follow Claude’s search for something that prosperity, work, and family cannot give him.
- The prairie up close Enter a Midwestern world of churches, machines, and sharp quarrels over money and drink.
- Love with different hopes Watch Claude and Enid seek a shared life while wanting different things from it.
- People who see him Meet Ernest Havel and David Gerhardt, friends who answer Claude’s longing for understanding.
- Purpose at a cost Explore the unsettling pull of belonging when its promise leads toward war.
Is it for you?
This book suits readers who like quiet, observant fiction about ordinary lives, and anyone curious about the American Midwest or the First World War from a soldier's side. If you want fast action or a tidy plot, the slow first half may test you.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A restless son on a rich farm
- School opens a door and then shuts it
- Farm work and a father's wild ideas
- A marriage built on hope and mistake
- Enid leaves and Claude is alone
- War arrives and gives him a purpose
- The crossing and the ship of sickness
- France and the friendship of David Gerhardt
- What the book is about and how it is told
Who’s who
- Claude WheelerA restless, proud young Nebraska farmer who feels his life is wasted and longs for something large to give himself to.
- Nat WheelerClaude's loud, jovial, prosperous father, who loves to boast and joke but never quite sees what his younger son needs.
- Evangeline WheelerClaude's gentle and deeply religious mother, who loves her son and worries for him without knowing how to reach him.
- Bayliss WheelerClaude's older brother, a careful, pious and stingy businessman in town who irritates Claude with his narrow outlook.
- Enid RoyceA serious, principled neighbor whom Claude marries in the hope of sharing a richer life, and who has a calling of her own.
- MahaileyThe family's old servant, who speaks in a country voice and gives Claude steady, simple and fierce loyalty.
- David GerhardtA cultured violinist and army lieutenant in France, whose friendship gives Claude the understanding he has long wanted.
- Ernest HavelClaude's friend from the Bohemian farming community, a plain-spoken, thoughtful young man who shares his hunger for a fuller life.
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- Audiobook
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- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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One of Ours
by Willa Cather· 1922
A restless Nebraska farmer seeks purpose in the First World War.
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, 1923
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Language: English
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 9
A restless son on a rich farm
The story opens on the Wheeler farm in Nebraska. Claude Wheeler is the second son of Nat Wheeler, a loud, jokey, successful farmer who likes to be the biggest man in any room. Claude is quiet and proud, and he feels out of step with everything around him. He has land, food and a future laid out for him, yet he wakes each day with a sense that his life is being wasted.
The household is drawn with care. Nat Wheeler plays tricks on his sons and makes speeches. He is not cruel, but he does not notice what his younger son feels. Claude's mother, Evangeline, is gentle and deeply religious, and she tries to keep peace in a house of strong wills. Old Mahailey, the family's servant, speaks with a voice from another time and loves Claude with a fierce, simple loyalty.
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The author
Willa Cather
1873–1947 · American novelist
Willa Cather was an American novelist celebrated for her portraits of prairie life on the Great Plains. My Ántonia, her 1918 story of a Bohemian immigrant girl in Nebraska, remains one of the most beloved American novels of its era.
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What is One of Ours about?
It tells of Claude Wheeler, a restless young man on a Nebraska farm who feels his life lacks purpose. After disappointments at school and in marriage, he joins the American army in the First World War and goes to France.
Is One of Ours based on a true story?
It is fiction, but Willa Cather based Claude partly on her cousin G. P. Cather, who was killed at Cantigny in 1918. She used his letters and her own memories of Nebraska to build the character.
Did One of Ours win the Pulitzer Prize?
Yes. Willa Cather won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1923, for the book published the year before. It remains one of her most discussed works, partly because critics disagreed about it.
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