Lucy Gayheart

"Some people's lives are affected by what happens to their person or their property, but for others fate is what happens to their feelings and their thoughtsthat and nothing more."In this haunting 1935 novel, the Pulitzer Prizewinning author ofMy AntoniaandDeath Comes for the Archbishopperforms a series of crystalline variations on the themes that preoccupy her greatest fiction: the impermanence of innocence, the opposition between prairie and city, provincial American values and world culture, and the grandeur, elation, and heartache that await a gifted young woman who leaves her small Nebraska town to pursue a life in art. At the age of eighteen, Lucy Gayheart heads for Chicago to study music. She is beautiful and impressionable and ardent, and these qualities attract the attention of Clement Sebastian, an aging but charismatic singer who exercises all the tragic, sinister fascination of a man who has renounced life only to turn back to seize it one last time. Out of their doomed love affairand Lucy's fatal estrangement from her originsWilla Cather creates a novel that is as achingly lovely as a Schubert sonata.

Willa Cather was born on December 7, 1873, in Back Creek Valley, Virginia. Her father was a sheep farmer. When she was nine the family moved to Nebraska, eventually settling in the frontier village of Red Cloud. As a child Cather read voraciously, learning Greek and Latin from a neighbor, and displayed an early interest in science. At the University of Nebraska she immersed herself in literary studies and began writing stories and essays; following her graduation in 1895 she worked for some years as a journalist and schoolteacher, living part of the time in Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.<br><br>Willa Cather wurde am 7. Dezember 1873 in Back Creek Valley, Virginia geboren. Ihr Vater war ein Schafzüchter. Als sie neun war, zog ihre Familie nach Nebraska, letztendlich liess sie sich in einem <br>Grenzdorf Red Cloud