Cazul din Grover Station

by Willa Cather

As well as adding another story to the original forty-four, the revised edition updates and expands the chronology and the bibliographies in the light of recent research. It corrects factual and formal errors in the introduction and notes, and emends misprints in the text.

Genres: Fiction

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Wilella Sibert Cather was born in Back Creek Valley (Gore), Virginia, in December 7, 1873.

She grew up in Virginia and Nebraska. She then attended the University of Nebraska, initially planning to become a physician, but after writing an article for the Nebraska State Journal, she became a regular contributor to this journal. Because of this, she changed her major and graduated with a bachelor's degree in English.

After graduation in 1894, she worked in Pittsburgh as writer for various publications and as a school teacher for approximately 13 years, thereafter moving to New York City for the remainder of her life.

Her novels on frontier life brought her to national recognition. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, 'One of Ours' (1922), set during World War I. She travelled widely and often spent summers in New Brunswick, Canada. In later life, she experienced much negative criticism for her conservative politics and became reclusive, burning some of her letters and personal papers, including her last manuscript.

She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. In 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments.

She died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 73 in New York City.

Reviews

[Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Willa Cather's novels have been among my favorites, but I am less familiar with her short stories. I found this book at the Oakland Public Library and read the stories from her collections "The Troll Garden" and "The Bohemian Girl."
These stories are early efforts in Cather's career, and the quality is uneven. Her more memorable stories were written when she began mining her firsthand knowledge of the Midwest pioneers, particularly in Nebraska where she grew up.
I enjoyed "A Death in the Desert" from 1903, "A Wagner Matinee" from 1904, and "Paul's Case" from 1905. The last two take place in Pittsburgh and New York City, where Cather lived after she moved from Nebraska.
"The Enchanted Bluff" I especially liked. Published in Harper's in 1909, it is a story about six boys who camp out by a Nebraska river just before school is to begin in the late summer. The story is a mixture of realism and imagination, as the boys swim and eat a campfire supper while imagining and talking about a bluff where a magical Indian tribe lived.
The description at the beginning is superb: "The river was brown and sluggish, like any other of the half-dozen streams that water the Nebraska corn lands. On one shore was an irregular line of bald clay bluffs where a few scrub oaks with thick trunks and flat, twisted tops threw light shadows on the long grass. The western shore was low and level, with cornfields that stretched to the skyline, and all along the water’s edge were little sandy coves and beaches where slim cottonwoods and willow saplings flickered."
With my longtime interest in astronomy, I got the impression that the boys do not have a good grasp of astronomy while trying to show Percy Pound the Little Dipper after sunset, mixing it up with Orion's Belt, not anywhere close to Ursa Minor and surely not be visible at that time of night at that time of year. Cather had an interest in astronomy and other sciences when she was an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska. I assume she made the characters in this story having a minimal grasp of astronomy as they did in geography and history in talking about the enchanted bluff.
"The Bohemian Girl" of 1912 also impresses me. The story of Nils Ericson returning to see his wealthy farming family and the decision by restless Clara Vavrika, married to Nils' brother, to run away with him represents a clash between those who feel they must leave their small hometowns as young adults and the many more who stay where they grew up. Cather's more mature writing shows that there is no right or wrong in these decisions, with each having their benefits and costs.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Going to mark this as finished but I read only a few of the stories. Was interesting to see that the book arranges the stories in reverse chronological order. So I read the first story, the 'newest' short story in the collection, "The Bohemian Girl", written in 1912, first, and then jumped to the last or 'oldest' story entitled "Peter", published when Cather was 18 in 1892. I read a few in between as well and intend to return to it. But wow, I didn't realize how dark Cather's writing can be.

[Kathy Kattenburg · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories in this collection are in reverse chronological order, and the older ones are significantly less well done than the ones that came later, which I guess makes sense.

If you only read one story, make it "Paul's Case." It's stunning.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know the writing is "old fashioned" in this collection of short stories, but the sheer volume-- 543 pages--of intricate and very personal worlds Cather creates for each story, earns 5 stars from me. This particular volume includes an appendix of pseudonymous stories, notes on the editing, a chronology of Cather's life, and bibliographies of her (prolific) works.

[Joe Mossa · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love to read about families regardless of the time period. her family stories are great representations of family life both in the country and in small town, about teens, sibs, parents, old people , maids, preachers, priests.