Showing results by author "Willa Cather" in All Categories

r the death of his parents, Jim was sent to live with his grandparents in Black Hawk Nebraska. There he befriended Antonia, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants. Years later, Jim, now a successful lawyer in New York, returns to his childhood home and Antonia. Jim's love for Antonia has endured, much as she herself has endured tragic circumstances.

Alexandra Bergsons, the daughter of Swedish immigrants, inherits her family's ailing farm in Hanover, Nebraska upon the death of her father. Over the years, she turns the farm into a successful enterprise. However, success has not brought peace, as passion and love intervene.

This story is told from the perspective of Peggy, a teenager in the tiny town of Riverbank. Peggy is good friends with a girl named Nelly Deane. Nelly is considered by many to be the prettiest and most fun-loving girl in town. What happens to Nelly in the ensuing years after Peggy leaves Riverbank for college and then abroad is related through Peggy's infrequent visits back home and the letters she receives from one of the older women of Riverbank.

This collection includes "A Singer's Romance", "The Sentimentality of William Tavener", "The Count of Crow's Nest", "A Resurrection", "The Prodigies", and "Nanette: An Aside". These short stories reflect the author's extraordinary human insight.

Claude Wheeler resembles the youngest son of an American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It is only when his country enters the First World War that Claude finds what he has been searching for all his life.

The daughter of a Swedish minister growing up in Colorado, Thea Kronborg's musical talent sets her apart from her contemporaries. Driven by her determination to satisfy her artistic impulse, she moves to Chicago, where she falls in love with a wealthy married man. Her ability to resolve the tensions between her personal and professional lives and to communicate through her art makes her an unusual and thoroughly modern heroine.

"Paul's Case" was first published in 1905 in Cather's first collection of short stories, titled The Troll Garden. Similar to "The Enchanted Forest" featured in her Nine Stories published by Simply, it is one of the great writer's stories accessible to most young people in high school and college. It relates to what they feel, think, and want to be. Perhaps just as importantly, it depicts young people upset by their current circumstances, their families, and the drabness they perceive in their own lives.

The Bergsons, a Swedish family of settlers in Nebraska, battle drought and other disasters in an effort to establish a foothold in this new land.

Alexander's Bridge was Willa Cather's first novel and one of her best. Bartley Alexander was the world's leading bridge builder, something that was considered an awesome skill in the early 20th century. Alexander has the strength and regret that weave throughout Cather's male characters much as they do through those of her contemporary authors, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dreiser, Anderson, Lewis, and others.

Willa Cather was perhaps most famous for her great novels such as My Antonia and Death Comes to the Archbishop. However, her short stories were enchanting and practical, local and cosmopolitan. Of the great American writers of the early part of the twentieth century she stood alone in her vision. No American writer ever had her breadth of experience and knowledge of people and places, relating to farmers in Nebraska, to barons in New York, and artists in Paris.

At first glance, 'The Most Dangerous Game’ by Richard Connell, ‘Paul’s Case’ by Willa Cather, and ‘The Beast in the Jungle’ by Henry James have very little in common. In ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ Sanger Rainsford, an accomplished big game hunter, is marooned on a remote island that is inhabited by another big game hunter, General Zaroff, who has found a very twisted way to add thrills to his hunting parties.

O Pioneers! is a story of the immigrants who came to America to build new lives for themselves. Struggling against poverty, ignorance, drought, and storm, they came to love and understand the land, until it rewarded them with a richness exceeding all imaginings.

Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant, learns of the joys and hardships of life as she and her family realize their dream in the Nebraska farmlands. Willa Cather called Antonia "a rich mine of life, like the founders of the early races."

Thea Kronberg has a voice that can call down angels and the soul of a Colorado pioneer girl. But as she develops her talents and devotes herself to the life of an artist, she must consider the cost of the creative path she follows. Willa Cather's classic novel is full of the breathtaking beauty of the American frontier and the spirit of the people who live there.

These treasured stories from the most influential authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries are selected for their literary importance as well as their dramatic, oral qualities. Listen to these 10 unabridged classics by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, O. Henry, and Willa Cather.

Catch the holiday spirit with this magical collection of beloved Christmas tales. Christmas favorites from L.M. Montgomery, O. Henry, Willa Cather, Hans Christian Anderson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bret Harte and Anthony Trollope are lovingly recorded and presented here in one enchanting volume.

O Pioneers! is a classic moving tale of the frontier told in a powerful style and with a strong sense of character. When Alexandra Bergson’s father dies she is left with the responsibility of raising her younger brothers on their father’s unsuccessful farm. Alexandra is deeply involved with life as she meets the demands of laboring on the prairie farm, and wrestling with her conflicting emotions.

After studying piano as a child, Thea Kronborg leaves her family and their frontier town of Moonstone, Colorado, to pursue music in Chicago. There, her instructor insists that her singing voice is her greater gift, and she begins to work on mastering her craft. Seeking to become one of the world's greatest opera singers, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and fulfillment that takes her across the world.

This varied assortment of Ms. Cather's gorgeous writing includes: "Flora and Her Artists", "The Sculptor's Funeral", "The Garden Lodge", "A Death in the Desert", "The Marriage of Phaedra", "A Wagner Matinee", and "Paul's Case".

Two French priests have been sent to New Mexico to reawaken the faith. There, they must contend with unforgiving landscapes, danger, rebellion and loneliness. But through their many years together they are sustained by faith, friendship and the awe-inspiring majesty that surrounds them. A work of great simplicity and sublime beauty, Willa Cather's acclaimed novel asks, what is a life well lived? Death Comes for the Archbishop is a masterpiece by the author of O Pioneers! and the great novelist of American frontier life.