Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership by Andro Linklater

battlefi elds in France. To a good friend Cather wrote, “You see I absolutely know this; some of him still lives in me, and some of me is buried in France with him.” This book, eventually titled One of Ours, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. In her long life (1873– 1947), Cather penned twelve novels. While she broadened her canvas to write novels like Death Comes for the Archbishop, set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Shadows on the Rock, set in Quebec, she always researched deeply to provide the color and detail for people and places. Cather’s letters vividly capture the artist at work over the span of six decades. And from the earliest letters to the last, there is a sparkling intensity. In a letter to her beloved brother Roscoe in 1938, wherein she grieved the death of a close friend, she wrote, “As for me, I have cared too much, about people and places— cared too hard. It made me, as a writer. But it will break me in the end.” This creative tension characterized Willa Cather’s letters and her life and makes reading her a pleasure. Ann Henderson Hart hillsdale college Hillsdale, Michigan