A surprising number of us have our own, apparently mostly secret, relationship with Willa Cather. Her authenticity, her moral clarity, her sharp wit that doesn’t feel mean, her understanding of a longing that’s close to the bone, her profoundly human characters and the way  she sees them. Several of the writers I’m working with this summer got into a beautiful discussion about her online, and there was some gleeful surprise about how many of us loved her and how passionately. The Prairie Trilogy (O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia) are huge favorites with writers and readers, and so is Death of the Archbishop. I also have a special fondness for her first book of fiction (she’d published a volume of poetry earlier), The Troll Garden, a collection with some of her most famous stories, including a few I encountered when I was much too young to understand loss or disappointment, like “Paul’s Case” and “A Wagner Matinee.”