One of Ours

"One of Ours" is the 1922 Pulitzer price winning novel of Willa Cather. Claude Wheeler was "one of ours" who left his Nebraska farm to fight and die in the Great war. He was an eager, sensitive youth, to whose inarticulate longings life had brought no answer. In the world which seemed so catisfying to all around him he had never felt at home. Except with his mother and faithful old Mahailey. all his relationships had been disappointing and even between himself and his mother her narrow religious beliefs had made a barrier. His marriage proved the crowning disappointment of all. He lived on his prosperous acres in the midst of material plenty, hungry for he knew not what, longing to do something with his life. Miss Gather makes the war a means of release to his baffled soul. He went gladly, never questioning that the call was clear, the cause glorious. He found in Franice the youth he had never had, companionship, a meaning to life, and died before the disillusionment which he could never have borne ...