Willa Sibert Cather was born on 7th December, 1873 and although born in Virginia grew up and was educated in Nebraska, the eldest of seven children. Although she moved to Pittsburgh for a job on a woman's journal and later to New York City for an editorial post, her successful novels were about frontier life and informed by her experience in Nebraska. The western state's harsh weather and dramatic landscape coupled with the multi cultural immigrant

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She thought she knew what she wanted in life . . . then Jonathan arrived.Eighteen-year-old Grace Knutson loves Blessing, North Dakota, and sees no reason to leave. She's more serious-minded than her twin sister, Sophie, and very sensitive to the feelings of others. In spite of her family's disapproval, Grace has always had a soft spot in her heart for Toby Valders, for she's seen the vulnerable side he keeps well hidden. Jonathan Gould, the handsome...

Barbara Kingsolver's fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel's intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily...

Maddy Morton is used to being on the run. . . .

Years ago, she ran away from home with a man her parents warned would be the ruin of her. Now she's on the run again, with her ten-year-old son, Nicholas, to escape that man, her abusive ex-husband, Gabe. Destitute, angry, and determined never to trust a man again, Maddy returns to the only place she's always felt safe—home. That means facing Jesse, her depressed father, who told her never

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My dear Beth, Though Uppsala, Iowa, takes its name from a city in my native Sweden, life here is different from what I have known. With my parents' blessing, I have taken employment in the home of Mr. Bridger, a dairy farmer, caring for his ill mother and two young, orphaned nieces. It is most unlike me to leave home, even in a temporary manner. But the need is great and Hattie Bridger and the children are so endearing. As for Dirk Bridger, he is...

With a history of childhood loss and tragedy, Arliss Greene grows up to love his cattle more than his family. The memory of his family's displacement, due to TVA's construction of Norris Dam, stays with him as he struggles to make a living farming. His son Daniel tries to distance himself, but an inexplicable attachment to East Tennessee causes him to return to the hilltop where he grew up. He is shocked and disappointed when his wife, Leda, a city...

When Dr. Marah Morgan returns to Cowley County, Kansas, she is surprised to find herself agreeing to run the family farm for her injured and difficult father. When government agents arrive and begin searching the farm for an Indian burial ground, Marah grows suspicious. A mysterious stranger appears, looking for work. Then Marah discovers alarming details about her mother's death more than twenty-five years earlier, making her wonder if reconciliation...