The perfect place to stay in France: The Hotel Pastis

Some books are like a vacation.   Open the covers, look at the first paragraph and you're on your way to some exotic location, away from the everyday grind. You can go hunting with Hemingway, rafting with Twain or sailing with Thor Heyerdahl.  Those vacations are wonderful, but come along with me to the South of France.  You won't have to pack a bag or learn the language but you must bring along your sense of humor.   It's required when you check in to The Hotel Pastis by Peter Mayle

Peter Mayle made enough wealth and fame in advertising to retire early to a farmhouse in France.  Then he became internationally rich and famous writing about his retired life.   The Hotel Pastis is a novel but there's enough about advertising and the South of France there to suggest it's a thinly disguised memoir with just enough fiction in it to keep people from suing.   Truth or libel, the book is a treat.

The hero, Simon Shaw, is a man in need of an interest.  His work life doesn't fascinate him any more: the ad agency he helped build is so successful that all he does is butter up clients, cash the checks and argue with his partners.  His personal life is equally boring: the second ex-wife just left taking her wardrobe, her mean mind and a lawyer's ransom of money but leaving a blah, empty home.  Under orders to cheer up, Simon takes a driving holiday through the South of France. Then a car accident strands him in one of those sunny villages that tourists dream about: a place away from the world; a place where the day can be savored with the food and wine; a place to start life over again.

There is a sub-plot involving bicycles and a bank heist but the best parts of The Hotel Pastis are the people in Simon's world.  There's Jordan, Simon's dyed-in-tweed British partner who lives to fulfill every cliche of English Life, and Zeigler, Jordan's American counterpart. There's Ernest, Simon's  majordomo in England and a surprising aide-de-camp in France.   Luckily for Simon, there's also Nicole Bouvier, the blonde who captures his interest and gives him the idea for a project: the Hotel Pastis.

No, this isn't great literature but that's not why I go back to this book.  "Great literature" doesn't always seem that great when it's dark and cold outside.  Instead, I'll pick up The Hotel Pastis and watch sunlight bounce off of the cover.  The heat of Provence will radiate from the pages and take the chill out of this room.  A soft breeze will flow with the chapter and I'll hear the irresistible chink of ice in a pitcher and the click of balls on a boules court.  I can smell the fields of lavender already.  Y'all enjoy your cold, hard December.  I'm taking the next book to France.

Introducing Scottish Noir

There are a lot of genres in crime fiction.  There are cozy mysteries and hard-boiled detective tales, capers and whodunits.  There are police procedurals, legal thrillers, psychological suspense books and we'll have some more genres next Tuesday.  In the meantime, one of my current favorite writers is Val McDermid, the journalist who created what she calls "Scottish Noir".    This means her characters have the uncompromising, tough and amoral personalities the frequented Dashiell Hammett's novels but McDermid's stories are settled in the cold, bleak areas of Scotland.    Add to this mix a set of villains so strange that Thomas Harris could have invented them and you've got Scottish Noir.  These books aren't for everyone but, boy, are they good.  McDermid is best known for her Carol Jordan/Tony Hill series but if you want an introduction to her work, I'd start off with the thriller, A Place of Execution.

A Place of Execution is about the twin investigations into the disappearance of Alison Carter, an adolescent that disappeared one night in December of 1963.  Allison's home was Scardale, a one-road village where half a dozen families have lived since the world began.  The young Detective Inspector, George Bennett, has to figure out what happened to Allison, no easy task since he's a stranger and the locals of Scardale don't trust him.  Two other children recently disappeared in the next larger town and Detective Bennett fears the missing Allison is a third victim.  Add that George Bennett is a decent chap at the beginning of his career and marriage and you have a policeman who suffers when a child vanishes on his watch.  And Alison does, right into the cold, night air of Scotland.  Though the police find her dog and evidence of a crime, they never find her body or bones.

Thirty-five years later, Catharine Heathcote is primed to write a book about the Alison Carter case.  A journalist who was the same age as Alison, she remembers the girl's disappearance and the effect it had on her young life.  Now she has the chance to review the evidence and maybe draw out a few ghosts.  Catharine also runs the risk of re-opening wounds.  George Bennett is still haunted by the girl he could never bring home.  And although it seems modern, much of Scardale hasn't changed since 1963.  Like its habit of keeping secrets.

A Place of Execution has much to recommend it, including pace, tension and some very interesting characters.  Still, it is not for the faint of heart.  Terrible things happen in the world, according to Val McDermid, and the only chance for justice is when the good guys are as tough as the bad ones.  If you can accept that fact, you'll survive it seems, in these stories of Scottish Noir.  If you can't, do yourself a favor and don't walk out alone.

Reference Books you can Love

It's easy to fall in love with fiction.  If the writer's done his/her job, a reader can sit back with a well-formed story, a balanced plot and distinctive characters with unforgettable lines.   Everything should work out in fiction.   Non-fiction's not quite so easy.  Perhaps the hero didn't have a memorable speech or the author missed meeting that all-important member of the cast.  That author can either tell the truth or stretch it, both of which create their own downsides but, if a talented writer finds an interesting subject and is willing to do the research, some non-fiction books are terrific.   But reference books are the Rodney Dangerfields in a printed world: they rarely get any respect, so nobody wants to write them.  Without plot or characters, the tomes seldom get attention.  I know of three exceptions to the rule.  You can read them for reference or for pleasure but either way, you'll never be bored.

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. 

 This book is history, itself.  An English publisher named Beeton talked his wife into assembling this household bible in the 1850's and for decades it reigned in the homes of British middle and upper class citizens while Victoria reigned on the throne.  Ninety percent of the book is recipes (Wikipedia tells me the Downton Abbey team uses it for source material) but the remaining material is the treasure; this section gives the lady of the house the knowledge she needs for her life.   Which domestic should be hired first, what they should be paid and what are each of their duties?  Beeton tells this and then outlines how each job should be performed so a young wife could check behind the maid.  There's a section on childhood diseases and compounding simple medicines.  Medical and legal concepts are explained here as well as etiquette, economy, how to set up an efficient kitchen and profitably spend a day.   This book is an insight into British life itself during the years of Victoria and it's fascinating to read.  I don't cook and I'm hopeless at entertaining but I'll keep my copy of Beeton's.   With her, I think I could out-do Martha Stewart.

An Incomplete Education

Can you tell what a life my copy's led?   I got it in the early 1990's, when I was self-conscious about my unfinished college degree.  I thought the dear book could help me appear less unlettered in conversation with graduates.  Since then I've read untold numbers of books, picked up my sheepskin and talked with enough intellectual drop-outs and ignorant alumni to sink a small island but I keep going back to this book because An Incomplete Education's not just informative, it's fun.

Every section is well-laced with humor (well, every section I go back to - I usually skip the science) and has titles like, "American Intellectual History and Stop That Snickering."  If you've gone through the novels of Jane Austen and are lost in the shrubbery, this book explains the difference between the style, the weir and the haha.  (Yes, that's right, a haha.)  And it's full of bits that stick in the memory like differentiating between Shelley and Keats. (Between the two, Keats was more stable, emotionally.  He's the one you could play handball with.)   Does it substitute for a college education?  Of course not.  Is it more fun to read than your senior project?   Gee, what do you think?

The Elements of Style

This may be the most neglected book on the planet.  Every writer, every educator and many administrators I know swear by the book and beg others to follow it.  I understand that newly-minted Alabama attorneys receive copies from the appellate court with instructions to follow its dicta when writing.  Entire websites are devoted to it.   But does anyone read it?  I don't think so, except me and a word-struck cousin.  Many of the paperbacks I find look unopened and covered with dust. That's a shame.  Between these unassuming covers lie the keys to the kingdom.

Some background: Professor Strunk came up with some basic composition rules for his students at Cornell and he distributed these in small, brown, bound books .  Many of the students kept their books including one E. B. White, who later wrote Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little.  Like many of his classmates, he remembered the book with affection.  When it was finally published, he added the section, "An Approach to Style."

Professor Strunk's rules are a guide to producing clean, serviceable prose, the meat-and-potatoes of literature.  These cover anything from where to put the apostrophe (Charles's books!) to making the meaning clear ("Omit Needless Words!).  This part can seem pedantic and some critics insist the authors violate their own instructions on occasion but this guide is still referred to because it works.  Following these rules helps you create reasonable, unpretentious prose.

Now my secret: I read E. B. White's section on style for pleasure.  As a writer, Mr. White used simple, clear language to express ideas and impressions.   His narratives develop so seamlessly that each paragraph seems like the inevitable result of the last.  He makes writing look easy.  In "An Approach to Style" White talks about how a writer is revealed by his or her choices and how using a simple narrative style keeps the story flowing.  His suggestions don't have the stentorian mandate of "Omit needless words" but they are persuasive, partly because they're expressed so well.  Since all writing is an attempt at communication, Mr. White's suggestions clear out any language that obscures the message.  This essay is a remarkable work.

Of course, these are not run of the mill reference books.  Many reference tomes are as dense and dull as you'd expect so I'm campaigning for these.   In a field where dull books fill shelves like lumps of lead, Beeton's, Incomplete and The Elements are pure gold.

"I announce with trembling pleasure the appearance of a great story..."

I'll never forget reading that blurb.  It was on the back of a beige book my mother had brought from the library and when I read it, I said, "Well, that's a bit much.  I flipped the book over and looked at the pen-and-ink cover drawing and the red and black type underneath. It still didn't look very promising.   I looked askance at my mother who shrugged her shoulders.  "Read it or don't" she said. "I thought you might like it, you liked animal stories when you were little."  She looked at the cover and added.  "It has rabbits in it."  That's how I met Watership Down.

I didn't know it at the time but I was merely the latest in a long line of people to underestimate this story, starting with its author.  Richard Adams entertained his daughters during rides to school with stories of what they saw along the way: country roads and rabbits.  It wasn't until the girls demanded a written account that he started to shape the tale.  Then, four publishers and three agents turned down the manuscript saying "Adults won't read an animal story and it's far too scary for kids."  The publisher who printed the first edition couldn't afford to make many books but he did make a point of getting those copies into the hands of influential critics.  The praise was heard in America and the rest, as they say, is history.  The world fell in love with Watership Down.

For the book isn't just a story of anthropomorphized hares.  If that's what you want (which is fine!) other stories have bunnies that wear clothes and have cunning homes with furniture.   Watership Down is an epic where rag-tag wanderers venture into the Great Unknown when their home is threatened with extinction.  They face terror and danger from unexpected sources and they learn to trust each other for survival.  There's humor and pathos, courage and unexpected luck like there should be in any adventure story and there's even a bit of information about rabbits.  Mr. Adams consulted the best rabbit expert he could find when he wrote Watership Down and tried to incorporate the man's knowledge.  In other words, its an adventure story where the heroes happen to be rabbits.

There's also love for the land in this tale and nothing pleased me more than to learn Watership Down really exists.  The country is in Hampshire, between the village of Kingsclere and Highclere Castle, site of the popular series "Downton Abbey".  At least two web sites have been created to give visitors a virtual tour of the sites in the novel (Bits and Bobstones and Journey to the Real Watership Down) and it seems the locals are used to findng fans of the novel wandering around the Beech Tree.  I have my own reasons for wanting to visit that country (there's a huge historic horse stable there) but I'd count myself lucky to stand near the summit and echo Blackberry in saying, "Come and look, you can see the whole world."

So yes, I still love this story of rabbits which is and is not true.  As long as courage is needed and friends are true and evil must be resisted, there's a need for Watership Down.   And bless the critic that wrote, "I announce with trembling pleasure the appearance of a great story..."   That person spoke the truth.

King Arthur when he was The Wart.

Is it true that children no longer read The Sword in the Stone?  A friend of mine with kids says so.  Between dystopias, vampires, diseases and monsters, kids are skipping the fantasy that stood the  Arthurian legend on its head and that makes me sad.  Almost two generations of readers have come of age with no idea of White beyond a Disney movie or a Broadway show their grandparents talked about.  Forgive them, Merlin, they don't know what they've missed.

For one thing, they skip on a wonderful story with a  delicious sense of humor.  Malory  wrote about Arthur's birth in Le Morte D'Arthur but we never get to see the young prince grow up; he goes from infant to sword-puller in less than a thousand words and there's no guessing what happened in between.  T. H. White invented all that by mixing modern sensibilities with chivalric legends and he did it with a sense of humor.

One good example (a disgusting one but good) is the subject of fewmets, something the roaming King Pellinore knows a good deal about.  His sole object in life is to chase after the Questing Beast and a required part of the hunt is to collect fewmets, droppings of the beast pursued, so the hunter can track it.  This is an honest-to-God Medieval English term, but as Pellinore says, it's an unsanitary habit.  Between his hunting dog's tendency to wander and the mess he has to make scooping fewmets, the poor king becomes quite discouraged and would rather the Questing Beast chased itself.   Well, you can see the poor man's point.  Only T. H. White could find an ancient hunting practice, turn it into a bathroom joke and use that to develop a character.  Another joke at the end of the book is that once the new King has proven his heritage by pulling the Sword from the Stone, he's covered up with requests to help unstick doors, open bottles and fix other domestic emergencies. I love imagining the letters (Begging your pardon, Your Highness, but you must be fair strong, having pulled that pig-sticker from the Rock.  Could you open a jam jar for me?)  There's a lot of laughter in this book.

There's also a lot of natural history.  T. H. White had a keen interest in the natural world  and he  shows it off in The Sword in the Stone by having the young Arthur (known to everyone as Wart) temporarily transformed into various animals by his tutor, Merlyn.  It's a marvelous education.  The Wart learns about the corruption of power from the strongest fish in the moat, the effect of regimentation from ants, democracy from geese and the significance of mankind from a badger.  They're wonderful lessons and a good reminder that mankind, for all of our smarts and power, is just one of many species on this earth.  That's a lesson we often forget.

Well, T. H. White's books may be gathering dust right now but his influence is certainly felt.  A lot of the Wart's open, honest character and his unseen destiny can be traced to Neil Gaiman's Timothy Hunter and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter.  And some books return, like the seasons.  Watch and be patient and someone will rediscover the Castle of the Forest Sauvage, Archimedes, Robin Wood and the Wart.  Someone else will mention The Questing Beast and we'll all be off again, laughing about fewmets, talking about T. H. White and rereading The Once and Future King.  And I'll be sitting in a corner with Archimedes the Owl, nodding and saying, "I thought so."

My Favorite Outsider: Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady

I'm a fool for those that make me laugh.  If you want me to endorse a candidate, follow a flag, babysit kids or be nice to your Mama, make me giggle.  That's been true for a long time and that's why I champion Florence King.  I've never met the lady, don't expect to meet her and I don't endorse many of her positions but she has my undying devotion (and I read whatever she writes) because she tells a story well and her stories can make me laugh.   

Florence is the ultimate outsider,  She comes by it genetically, according to her memoir, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady.   Her mother, Louise, was the anti-Southern Belle who cursed, competed with men and avoided flirting like it was the plague.  Her father was a self-educated cockney musician who didn't follow any of the practices associated with a Gentleman of the South. These two oddballs got along by accepting each other's differences and their only child was Florence.  That girl puts them both in the shade.

Imagine, if you will, a beautiful child who goes off to school wearing pinafore dresses and Mary Janes.  Her favorite beverage is black coffee, she already reads, writes and knows more about British history than the teacher and, oh yes, she doesn't like other children.  Can't stand the immature, drippy little sots.  (For some reason, they don't care for her either.)  Little Florence said she honestly surprised to be classed in with these proto-human beings.  Until first grade, she never realized she was a child.  She just assumed she was short.

Luckily children eventually mature and you'd think she'd be happier in adolescence.  Nope, Florence discovers she's gay.  Remember this is the 1950's when everyone is expected to conform.  It was the Era of The Closet and Florence is expected to like boys.  Well, boys aren't bad but it's a girl that really speaks to her soul and Florence is still outside mainstream culture and watching the rest of the world.  At least she's getting used to being uncomfortable.

Move to the 1960's and 70's when things are getting a little more tolerant, at least if you are left wing.  Did I mention Florence is politically conservative?   This may go back to her dislike of groups (It's hard to find any groupier group than the Kym-By-Ya-Yahs of that period) but either way, she's out in the cold.  The GOP can't tolerate her private life.   The Daughters of Sappho can't stand her public views.  (Last I heard, she was lambasting the Tea Party as a bunch of publicity seeking, spoiled TV brats - that's our Florence, dissing anyone who behaves badly. Reality TV must leave her exhausted)

Because Florence is, in the end, a Southern Lady, even when she fails the course.  She may not gush over people or serve in the Junior League but she does believe in treating others with respect; the same respect she'd like to receive.    I think I can manage that, if I watch my grammar and avoid her presence.   May she live as long as she wants to and enjoy her life as an outsider.  And if it's possible, I hope she writes some more.  I don't have to agree with her when she makes me laugh.

The Halifax Explosion

Everyone has obsessions:  mine are centered around entertainment and art but my husband is obsessed with disasters.   There's history in these tales and often the tragedy of hubris and the indelible courage of the fallen and the survivors.  Disaster stories are all about humanity at our best, how we recover from the worst and I think that's why my husband likes them.  Consequently, I'm always on the lookout for a disaster story he may not know.  A few years ago, I learned of the Halifax Explosion and found the book Shattered City.   If disaster tales are your cup of tea, this is a book for you.

It was December 6, 1917, ninety-seven years ago last Saturday, and two ships were both in a hurry.  The Imo, a French ship was late leaving Halifax's harbor with relief supplies for Belgium while the SS Mont Blanc was trying to get into port with a full load of explosives.  They collided and spilled fuel on the Mont Blanc set that ship on fire.  The crew abandoned ship and the Mont Blanc drifted, unmanned, toward the town.

In those days, the fanciest houses were set close to the water and they got a view of the burning Mont Blanc.  It was early morning and as the explosives on board started to burn, sparks shot into the air, making the Mont Blanc look like a floating 4th of July display.   Crowds gathered at the wharf and the town's only fire engine showed up, expecting to protect the wharf-side buildings.  Then, at 8:45 the ship exploded.

Sixteen hundred people died immediately and every building within a mile and a half radius was wiped out or horribly damaged.  The water was momentarily blown out of the harbor and the rush back created a tsunami.  The force blew the injured Imo to the opposite shore and Mont Blanc's anchor two miles inland through the air.  Until the atomic bombs, this was the biggest explosion on record.

The Halifax survivors must have thought they'd been sent straight to hell. Remember it was December and all the houses had stoves and furnaces going to keep out the cold.  The blast knocked over all of those stoves and the collapsed houses began to burn. Because the entire fire company had died at the edge of the wharf (with their fire engine) no one could put out the fires.  All the window glass blew out, blinding and maimng people who thought they were watching from a safe distance.  Then, in a final insult to injury, Halifax got hit with a blizzard.

The book Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion and the Road to Recovery  covers all this and more, from the little girl who survived fire and cold because an ash-bucket landed on top of her to the rumors of a German attack that filled the city after the disaster.  (Remember, WWI was still going on then and Halifax knew they might be a target)  The fallen are remembered as well as the group of people who did everything they could to heal the survivors and the town.  It's a really good story.

It's good to remember why things go wrong as well as when things go right.  It's the least we can do for the victims and it can teach us where we need to take care.  Shattered City is a book well worth reading on these cold December nights.  It's pays respect to the lost souls of Halifax.

An alternate reality for book nuts: The Eyre Affair

I used to listen to the Book Radio Channel.  This as a 24/7, 365 internet channel where books and radio serials were read aloud to the subscribers and I liked it.   Instead of the same 250 songs in rotation, I got stories.  Some were familiar and loved but often they were something new and either way, I was entertained.  Imagine, a channel whose programming targeted my special interest!  Evidently that interest was too specialized to be profitable because they closed the channel down but not before I found another book worth keeping.   Trust Book Radio Channel to read Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair out loud.   This fantasy is a bibliophile's dream.

The Eyre Affair is one of those alternate-universe stories but one where Readers are the Cool Guys on Campus.   Seriously.   Writers are treated like rock stars.  The populace likes watching Shakespearean plays (In one place, "Richard III" is watched and performed nightly by a group of  Rocky-Horror type devotees) and the Baconites go around witnessing like Mormons.  There are other, less-startling ideas like a time-traveling guard and a Crimean war that lasts longer than a century but nothing compares to a public that cherishes books. The security force for all this bibliophila is the agency LiteraTec.   And LiteraTec's top agent and narrator here is the incredible Thursday Next.

In many ways, Thursday is a standard fictional detective.  She has tragedy in her past, (PTSD from her own service in Crimea as well the sorrow of a lost brother and injured fiance) she has to fight her superiors in the service almost as much as the bad guys and (oh yeah) she's as resourceful and cool as James Bond.   She doesn't see this, but we do.   And she's the only one who can save great published literature from the arch-villain, Acheron Hades.

"How can anyone hurt a published novel?" I hear you cry.   Well in this universe, an author literally creates another reality when writing fiction and someone with an original manuscript and the right skills or technology  can breach the novel's reality and change the story.  When the original manuscript is changed, all of the subsequent printings change to match it.  (Now imagine if this was true. They'd have to lock up the Harry Potter manuscripts to keep people from leaping into Hogwarts.)  Acheron Hades acquires this technology and murders an incidental character in Martin Chuzzlewit.  Great Britain goes nuts.  Then, he's threatens Jane Eyre.

How Thursday goes after the bad guy and solves a few other problems is the rest of the story and I can promise Jane Eyre fans a delightful twist but I won't reveal the rest.   Give The Eyre Affair a try if you like fantasy or books in general and if you like it, there are more in this series.  At least you'll see a world where literacy is Cool.   A place where Book Radio is King.

Our cozy southern sister in crime

I miss Anne George.  During the early 1990's, when I was settling into life as an adult, Anne was one of the literary lights in Birmingham, Alabama.  She was a local girl who taught for years and wrote poetry and short stories on the side.  After retiring from education, her literary career swung into high gear and she made readers and booksellers happy until that day in 2001 when she died, most unexpectedly, during heart surgery.   Her passing broke a lot of hearts, including my friend J.'s, who appreciated her as a friend as well as an author.  Anne's poetry was good but what I miss most are her Southern Sisters mysteries.  Anne turned Birmingham into the setting for her Southern cozies.

Cozies are that sub-set of mysteries that are uncomplicated fun.   Any violence is usually off-stage, the detective is normally an amateur and there's a minimum of grit or grime.  Jessica Fletcher is a good example of a cozy's detective, although the first must have been Miss Jane Marple.  Normally, I like mayhem in my mysteries and angst running through all of the characters (hurray for Val McDermid!) but I love Anne George's Southern Sisters mysteries because she wrote about the world I live in.  And she wrote about it well.

For example, let's take my favorite in the series, Murder Makes Waves.  The central characters, Mary Alice and Patricia Anne, are known to the world as Sister and Mouse.  (Six feet tall and 250 pounds means Mary Alice is a presence in any room.  At five foot one and 105 lbs., Patricia Anne can get overlooked).   These sisters are driving down to Destin with an adult daughter when they stop to see the sights along the way.   Every place in that road trip exists, from the Peach Butt water tower of Chilton County  and Priester's Pecans to the House of Turkey and the Hank Williams museum.   Stopping at each of these does turn a four hour trip into eight, as Anne observes, but it's part of a trip to the coast.   Not stopping would make a vacation feel incomplete.

Anne George wrote about the sweet foibles of life here, from the perennial battle to cover the Vulcan Statue's behind (he stands there on top of Red Mountain wearing nothing but an apron and mooning the city of Homewood) to our addictions to college football and barbeque.  This is trivial compared to the rest of Birmingham's history but it's nice that someone noticed the small things, the fun and silly things that also add to our lives.  Anne enriched as well as documented our world with her poetry and cozy mysteries.  Birmingham owes her a debt of thanks.

The Soul-Tugging Need for the Prairies: O Pioneers!

Siblings always surprise you.   When you are young, siblings are your competition for the limited resources known as Mom and Dad.  They are part of the family woodwork and it's hard to see them outside of their family roles, at least while you're sharing a bathroom.  I'm not sure when I first saw my sister as a grown individual but it probably started when she told me she loved Willa Cather's, O Pioneers!  I noticed this because I had been avoiding Cather's work for years.

Cather is, of course, the novelist of the Great Plains and since we grew up in that area, I had avoided her just to be contrary.  There are other prairie writers but Cather usually leads the pack with her stories about the European settlers that came to the Plains and remade their lives on that alien land.  The feeling the settlers develop for this land is central in Cather's O Pioneers! and my sister acknowledged as much when she discussed it.  "I read it," she said, "when I'm homesick."  I decided to give the story a chance.  Now it's a "read-every year" book for me.

On the simplest level, O Pioneers! is the story of Alexandra Bergson and her family.  In the beginning, Alexandra's father has begun the work of a sod buster but he is not successful.   The land is hard to cultivate, the weather is harsh and his own life is ending.  A perceptive father, he instructs his sons to defer to Alexandra in business decisions because she has the shrewdest brain in the family and tells the children to work toward keeping the family together.  Years later, the family thrives financially as the prairies change to tillable farmland but harsh words and innuendo force the siblings apart.  Alexandra loses people she loves dearly before her future becomes clear.

The book also looks lovingly at the first wave of immigrants that broke ground on the Plains while it points out the pomposity of the next generation.   There's poor Ivar who weaves wonderful hammocks and treat livestock as knowledgeably as any vet.  Nevertheless, the younger adults threaten him with the insane asylum because he prefers to go barefoot.  (His reasoning is a little odd on this subject but there's no harm in the man).  Then there is old Mrs. Lee who has to sneak around her grown children if she wants to wash in a little tub or wear a nightcap to bed.  She's a sweet soul with three teeth, a Swedish accent and happy attitude.  While the younger adults worry about appearances and gossip, these two and Alexandra focus on enjoying life and being kind to others.

Of course the book has its love stories but the great beloved here is the land.  There's the shaggy, untamed winter land that inspires feelings of freedom and loneliness.  There's the tilled land of summer that gives itself in full measure to crops.  The Earth is always there for Alexandra, through division and heartbreak, and it is her great comfort when someone dies.  For others, the land is a source of wealth and power.  For Alexandra, it's love and life itself.  To her, the land is home.

A bit of that feeling comes to folks who grow up on the Plains and it doesn't goes away if you leave.  My sister and I both live in states far away and we've both put down roots where we live.  But I suspect some part of both of us is tied to the grass and endless sky and it waits for the day we come home.  Like Cather, neither one of us still live on the prairie but the prairie lives on in us and O Pioneers is an express ticket back.