"Shadows on the Rock" is a historical novel written by the American author Willa Cather. The book was published in 1931 and is set in the 17th century in colonial New France, specifically in Quebec City. The novel focuses on the lives of the early French settlers and the challenges they faced while establishing a life in the rugged wilderness of North America. The central character is Cécile Auclair, a young girl who, with her father, makes the difficult journey from France to Quebec to join her mother. The novel provides a vivid portrayal of daily life, relationships, and the interactions between the French settlers and the indigenous people of the region. "Shadows on the Rock" is known for its rich historical detail and evocative descriptions of the landscape and characters. Willa Cather's storytelling captures the enduring spirit and resilience of the early settlers in North America. The novel is celebrated for its historical accuracy and its exploration of the human experience in a challenging and often harsh environment.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History (1976). The extraordinary biography of a pioneer hero of the frontier Southwest from the author of Great River. Originally published in 1975, this Pulitzer Prize for History–winning biography chronicles the life of Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy (1814–1888), New Mexico’s first resident bishop and the most influential, reform-minded Catholic official in the region during the late 1800s. Lamy’s accomplishments, including the endowing of hospitals, orphanages, and English-language schools and colleges, formed the foundation of modern-day Santa Fe and often brought him into conflict with corrupt local priests. His life story, also the subject of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, describes a pivotal period in the American Southwest, as Spanish and Mexican rule gave way to much greater influence from the United States and Europe. Historian and consummate stylist Paul Horgan has given us a chronicle filled with hardy, often extraordinary adventure, and sustained by Lamy’s magnificent strength of character. “Lamy of Santa Fe stands as a beacon in American biography.” —James M. Day, author of Paul Horgan “Lamy of Santa Fe is a classic work. Not only is the research exemplary but so is the narrative artistry, the work of history as art.” —Robert Gish, author of Nueva Granada: Paul Horgan and the Modern Southwest “Historians, and general readers as well, seeking vivid portrayal of the Southwest’s political, social and cultural traditions will find [this book] rewarding . . . the historical and literary heritage of Americans in general will be the richer for Mr. Horgan’s painstaking effort.” —Southwestern Historical Quarterly

With a balance of wisdom, candor, and scholarly rigor the beloved archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia takes on life’s central questions: why are we here, and how can we live and die meaningfully? In Things Worth Dying For, Chaput delves richly into our yearning for God, love, honor, beauty, truth, and immortality. He reflects on our modern appetite for consumption and individualism and offers a penetrating analysis of how we got here, and how we can look to our roots and our faith to find purpose each day amid the noise of competing desires. Chaput examines the chronic questions of the human heart; the idols and false flags we create; and the nature of a life of authentic faith. He points to our longing to live and die with meaning as the key to our search for God, our loyalty to nation and kin, our conduct in war, and our service to others. Ultimately, with compelling grace, he shows us that the things worth dying for reveal most powerfully the things worth living for.

"Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there—that, one might say, is created." This famous observation appears inWilla Cather on Writing, a collection of essays and letters first published in 1949. In the course of it Cather writes, with grace and piercing clarity, about her own fiction and that of Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen Crane, and Katherine Mansfield, among others. She concludes, "Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all—no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself—a game of make-believe, of re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it."

Cather, the Nebraska-born novelist, describes her childhood, her career as a writer, and the influences on her work