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

"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.

Edith Wharton and Willa Cather wrote many of the most enduring American novels from the first half of the twentieth century, including Wharton’s The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and The Age of Innocence, and Cather’s O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and Death Comes for the Archbishop. Yet despite their perennial popularity and their status as major American novelists, Wharton (1862–1937) and Cather (1873–1947) have rarely been studied together. Indeed, critics and scholars seem to have conspired to keep them at a distance: Wharton is seen as “our literary aristocrat,” an author who chronicles the lives of the East Coast, Europe-bound elite, while Cather is considered a prairie populist who describes the lives of rugged western pioneers. These depictions, though partially valid, nonetheless rely on oversimplifications and neglect the striking and important ways the works of these two authors intersect. The first comparative study of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather in thirty years, this book combines biographical, historical, and literary analyses with a focus on place and aesthetics to reveal Wharton’s and Cather’s parallel experiences of dislocation, their relationship to each other as writers, and the profound similarities in their theories of fiction. Julie Olin-Ammentorp provides a new assessment of the affinities between Wharton and Cather by exploring the importance of literary and geographic place in their lives and works, including the role of New York City, the American West, France, and travel. In doing so she reveals the two authors’ shared concern about the culture of place and the place of culture in the United States.

Shedding the turn-of-the-century social confines she felt existed for women in America, Edith Wharton set out in the newly invented "motor-car" to explore the cities and countryside of France. In A Motor-Flight Through France, originally published in 1908, Wharton combines the power of her prose, her love for travel, and her affinity for France to produce this compelling travelogue.