One of Ours (Paperback)
Staff Reviews
Memorial Day or Decoration Day, as my grandma called this end of spring day, is a few weeks away. Time to commemorate and remember the soldiers who have fought and died in our wars. Claude Wheeler is a young, idealistic restless son of a steadfast Nebraskan farmer. He sees his father's world as crass but Claude can't define his own "ideals". Conflicted as Claude is, he is very much a product of midwestern mores and morals. Discontented at home, he does his duty enlisting and going to France to fight in WWI or the "War to End all Wars", where he finds what he has been searching for all his life.
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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, One of Ours is the story of Claude Wheeler, the son of a Nebraska farmer. As a young man, Claude is dissatisfied with Nebraska farm like as well as his marriage to a childhood friend, desperate for a more cosmopolitan life. When America joins the Great War, Claude decides to enlist, where he finds excitement and fulfillment--as well as tragedy--on the battlefield.
One of Ours was considered a failure by some male critics of the day: H. L. Mencken said it "drops to the level of a serial in the Ladies' Home Journal, fought out not in France, but on a Hollywood movie-lot," and Ernest Hemingway panned Cather for not having experienced the front-line herself.
However, the Pulitzer committee considered it the greatest novel of the year, and this accessible, dramatic novel sold many more copies than Cather's more famous ones, O, Pioneers and My Antonia.