Willa Cather

Willa was born in 1873 in Virginia, but her parents moved out west when she was a child. She grew up in the West, in the Great Plains.. Nebraska. Her family tried farming but her fahter gave up after a while and moved to a nearby town, and opened an insurance business. Willa was boyish and for a time called herself William. She was keen to go to University... but originally she wanted to become a surgeon. She began to write and when she graduated she spent some time teaching. She was a successful teacher, but she eventually moved to New York to pursue her writing career. She wrote about the life on the Frontier, where many Swedish and German immigrants moved out to start farming on free land. She lived with a woman friend, Edith Lewis. One of her early novels was O Pioneers, about a girl called Alexandra, who takes over her father's land when he dies, and buys up more land.. Times are hard and most of the immigrants know little about farming. So they leave and sell their land, and Alexandra shrewdly buys it up. More Will Follow.