Willa Cather (1873-1947) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author best known for novels depicting pioneer life on the American frontier. Cather was born in Virginia, and her family moved to Nebraska when she was a young girl. Many of her books are set in the Great Plains region, which she called home throughout her youth. Cather earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and then worked as a journalist and high school English teacher in Pittsburgh and New York City. Her work was popular during her lifetime, resonating with period readers because of her exploration of themes related to the rugged frontier life, isolation and exile versus belonging and community, and the struggles of early settlers and Indigenous Americans during US expansion.

Cather’s early novels are among her most famous and are still widely read. O Pioneers! (1913) tells the story of a Swedish-American family trying to hold onto their farm during an era when many early immigrants left the prairie for the economic security of the city. Like Death Comes for the Archbishop, it explores the relationship between place and identity, or how rugged frontier spaces shaped the lives and experiences of individuals who lived and worked there, with a particular eye toward immigrant and outsider communities.