The wind brushed foreign settlers onto the untamed prairie lands of Hanover, Nebraska, where they would learn to live from the soil of the land. In the beginning of the novel, Willa Cather sets a dreary, cold, dark, stormy tone of the divide near Norway Creek, frontier similar to the unsure and suffering of the Bergson’s family. The land is the livelihood of the Bergson family, even after the father passes. Other prospectors might say, “one of the richest houses on the divide and that farmer was a women, Alexandra Bergson”(Cather 62) demonstrates a strong pioneer woman in the novel because “it is in the soil that she expresses herself deeply” (Cather 63). Alexandra has made her fathers dream a reality by keeping up the farm and upholding his
