One of Ours

First published in 1922, “One of Ours” is Willa Cather’s Pulitzer Prize winning story of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native at the turn of the 20th century. Claude is a young man who finds himself conflicted by the constraints of his overly pious mother and the demands that his father’s farm places on his education and life. While attending Temple College, a Christian university, Claude befriends Julius Erlich, whose free-thinking family begins to change his perception of the world and his place in it. Abruptly Claude is called away from his education to help his father expand his farming operation. Soon he finds himself married to Enid Royce, a childhood friend. The disappointment of domesticated life and commitments to his family’s farm leave Claude with a terrible sense of entrapment in a life of drudgery. When war breaks out in Europe, Claude sees an opportunity to escape and enlists in the U.S. Army. Willa Cather’s “One of Ours” is a captivating tale of a changing American frontier at the beginning of the 20th century and the plight of one young man to deal with it. This edition includes a biographical afterword.