Storyweb: Storytime For Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Willa Cather’s novel O Pioneers! for Amy Young For many of us, certain books immediately release a flood of memories – where we were when we first read them, friends and relatives who read the books with us. Such is the case for me with Willa Cather’s 1913 novel, O Pioneers! This wonderful book calls to mind Shepherdstown, West Virginia, almost twenty-five years ago. My new friend Amy and I were sharing book after book, poem after poem, film after film with each other. We’d met in Shepherdstown’s just-opened independent bookstore, Four Seasons Books, where Amy was a sales clerk and I was a customer. Since the beautiful October day that first brought us together, we’d been reveling in our shared love of literature. So it was inevitable that we’d be plopped in front of Amy’s TV when Jessica Lange’s made-for-TV adaptation of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! premiered as a Hallmark Hall of Fame special. Perhaps the Hallmark branding should have tipped us off. It’s not that the movie was terrible.