The author Willa Cather often evokes images of the Nebraska prairie—immigrants and migrants, wagons headed west, hardscrabble lives. What often isn’t pictured is a college education, wealthy farmers, and foreign wars—yet, a novel Cather wrote of these ideas, titled “One of Ours,” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923.
Excerpts from “One of Ours” were read during the 15th Annual Art & Literary Festival Nov. 15 through 17. Dramatic readings were performed at Joslyn Castle in Omaha on Nov. 15 and 17, and a dramatic reading was held Nov. 16 at the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska.
Scott Working selected the excerpts and directed the show, along with playing the parts of Mr. Wheeler and the Colonel under whom main character Claude Wheeler serves. Omaha Magazine spoke to Working ahead of the event.
“I wanted to show the mastery of the landscape and the people,” Working said of how he selected the pieces of the novel to be read. “I hope people fall in love with the Wheeler family and want to do a deep dive.”
Working said the novel feels like two separate books. The first half of the book focuses on Claude’s family life in Nebraska. He returns to the farm from college, where he had bounced from one field to another, played football, and discovered a family of freethinkers whom he befriended. He enjoys the landscape of Nebraska, but is always wishing for more from life. He marries a fellow romantic named Enid, who has lived in their small town her whole life, but, like Claude, is discontented. Enid leaves Claude when she learns her sister, a missionary in China, is ill.
His hopes of a happy married life dashed, Claude returns to the family farm to live, and, might have lived his entire life on the farm with his pious mother and easy-going father. Like so many people of that time, he plugged away at life as he knew it until the breakout of World War I. In this war, Claude sees his chance to be something greater, and he enlists right away.
Europe during World War I is the setting for the second half of the book. Claude becomes the hero he desires to be almost immediately when the transport ship is stricken with influenza and he assists the ships doctor. Claude continues his adventures overseas until he is struck by a bullet and dies during the war.
The story was read by seven actors, with only Nick LeMay, who performed the role of Claude, taking one role. The actors (Working, LeMay, Teri Fender, Sherry Josand Fletcher, Randall Johanningsmeier, Rob Parr, and Giovanni Rivera) stood in front of music stands and read the parts without costumes, without scenery, and without props—leaving the visuals of the story to the writer’s words and the audience’s imaginations.
Before the show was music, a fashion show, and a display from the Omaha Public Library’s book truck. The audience could roam Joslyn Castle, which displayed holiday decorations and the art of Eugene Kingman. Many of the visuals by Kingman were landscapes of Nebraska prairie and farms, as well as national parks and other natural settings. Kingman began receiving commissioned work in the 1930s.
“Although the timelines (of Kingman and Cather) don’t line up, being in the castle with these great landscapes, it (was) nice to have a Nebraska-born writer and a Nebraska-born painter,” Working said.
The event concluded Sunday with a lecture by Cather scholar Dr. Charles Johanningsmeir from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
