Willa Cather

Two nineteenth-century French priests pioneer through the American Southwest in this stunning classic from a Pulitzer Prize–winning author. Following the Mexican-American War, two French Jesuits leave Sandusky, Ohio, on a mission. Bishop Jean Marie Latour and his friend Father Joseph Vaillant are venturing to New Mexico territory to establish a Roman Catholic diocese. But this is no easy task. When the Jesuits arrive in the unforgiving landscape,...

First published in 1925, "The Professor's House" is the profound study of a middle-aged man's unhappiness by critically acclaimed American author Willa Cather. The novel tells the story of its central character, Professor Godfrey St. Peter, in three parts. In the first part, the Professor feels that he is losing control over his life and resists the direction it is taking. He is displeased with his family's move to a new house, with his daughters...

My Mortal Enemy is a poignant character study of an extraordinary woman of commanding personality named Myra who gives up a fortune to marry for love. But was it the right choice? This book shows how although love can exist between a couple, resentment and regret can still arise and this can threaten to ruin a marriage. Can Myra and Oswald's love stand the test or may this end in the death of the relationship or an even

First published in 1923, "A Lost Lady" by American author and Pulitzer-prize winner Willa Cather, is the story of the lovely and enigmatic Marian Forrester and her life in the Western American town of Sweet Water. The novel is told from the perspective of her young neighbor, Niel Herbert, and he begins by recalling the early days when Marian was a young, aristocratic bride newly arrived in the prairie town and adored by her pioneering husband, Captain...

Widely recognized as Willa Cather's finest book and one of the outstanding novels of American literature, My Antonia deals with the life of Bohemian immigrant and native American settlers in the vast frontier farmlands of Nebraska. It is a work which is particularly noted for its lucid and moving depiction of the prairie and the lives of those who live close beside it.

This collection of Willa Cather stories-her first book of fiction and the capstone of her early career-is as relevant today as at the time of its initial publication. As different and individually distinguished as the seven stories may be, they share as their subject the role and status of the artist in American society. The passions, ambitions, and pretensions, the cant and the pathos of the art world, artists, pseudo-artists, aficionados, and dilettantes-all...

In Willa Cather's The Burglar's Christmas‚ a young drifter finds himself alone on Christmas Eve, penniless and starving. Though he has failed at everything in life, including crime, he decides to break into a home and rob it to raise money for food. When he is caught in the act by the lady of the house, they both come to a terrible realization. The burglar's desperate act leads to a transformative act of holiday love and charity. First published...

First published in 1922, "One of Ours" is Willa Cather's Pulitzer Prize winning story of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native at the turn of the 20th century. Claude is a young man who finds himself conflicted by the constraints of his overly pious mother and the demands that his father's farm places on his education and life. While attending Temple College, a Christian university, Claude befriends Julius Erlich, whose free-thinking family begins to...

Willa Cather is considered to be one of the best chroniclers of pioneer life in the 20th century. She had a long and distinguished career writing essays, poems, short stories, and novels. This story is a powerful example of a frequent theme: the haunting, sometimes painful, contrast between city and country life.

My Ántonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America. When ten-year-old orphan Jim Burden is sent to live with his grandparents in Black Hawk, Nebraska, he meets and is instantly smitten by Ántonia Shimerda, the spirited eldest daughter of Bohemian immigrants. Through adventures, poverty, treachery, and tragedy the two form an enduring bond. Years later, Jim visits Ántonia and her husband,...