Willa Cather: A Life Saved Up

Willa Cather, author of "My Antonia" and "O Pioneers " and widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers, has also been dismissed in certain circles as a sentimental nostalgist, a grumpy critic of the modern world. Hermione Lee offers an alternative interpretation of a writer whose life and work were marked by fracture and dislocation, carefully suppressed or camouflaged desires, and a greater interest in the craft of writing than in an old-fashioned longing for rural simplicity. By analyzing the language and entering the landscapes of Cather's fiction, Lee provides a sensitive and perceptive account of this famously private woman and discovers an unrivaled imagination, a complexity wrongly interpreted as conservatism, and finally, a writer like no other.