One of Ours & Alexander's Bridge

One of Ours is a novel by Willa Cather. It tells the story of the life of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native around the turn of the 20th century. Claude, working on the family farm, and married to a woman who is more interested in her missionary work, than she is in him, tires of his monotonous life. When his wife leaves for China, he decides to enlist in the US Army, which has just begun preparing to enter the First World War. Claude believes that he has finally found his purpose in life, a place where he matters.

Alexander's Bridge is the first novel by Willa Cather. First published in 1912, it was re-released with an author's preface in 1922. Bartley Alexander is a construction engineer and world-renowned builder of bridges undergoing a mid-life crisis. Although married to Winifred, Bartley resumes his acquaintance with a former lover, Hilda Burgoyne, in London. The affair gnaws at Bartley's sense of propriety and honor.

Willa Sibert Cather (1873 – 1947) was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I.