Later Novels:A Lost Lady - The Professor's House - Death Comes for the Archbishop - Shadows on the Rock - Lucy Gayheart - Sapphira and the Slave Girl

The six works collected in this volume are at once intensely lyrical and formally perfect. Their fascination with Catholics in the American Southwest ( "The Professor's House, Death Come for the Archbishop" ) and in early Canada ( "Shadows on the Rock" ) reflect the older Cathers search for alternatives to the grasping civilization she felt was increasingly replacing the spirit for the early midwestern pioneers. This conflect is dramatized in "A Lost Lady. Sapphira and The Slave Girl, " a historical novel set in antebellum Virginia, is Cather's triumphant conclusion to her career as a novelist. This is the second volume in The Library of America's authoritative Will Cather edition, along with "Early Novels and Stories: the Troll Garden, Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, My Antonia, One of Ours, " and "Stories, Poems, and Other Writings."