The Song Of The Lark

Description

Thea Kronborg is born into poverty in a small desert town in the American Midwest. One of seven children, she is somehow set apart, a fact recognised by the discerning few, including Ray Kennedy, who longs to marry her but whose fate it is to set her free. With her rugged will and pioneer spirit, Thea carves her way from Moonstone, Colorado, to windy Chicago, from Dresden to New York and a triumphant debut at the Metropolitan Opera. She becomes a great opera singer but learns that as a true artist, she must make the most bitter sacrifices of all . . .

Born in 1873 to a family who had farmed in Virginia for generations, Willa Cather moved to her father's new ranch in Nebraska when she was eight. Her evocations of the pioneering West have established her as one of America's foremost writers. Cather died in New York in 1947.

'A tremendous, ranging story, economical and distilled as poetry, fast moving, rich and short. A mighty subject. A lovely book' JANE GARDAM of DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP 'Willa Cather makes a world which is burningly alive, sometimes lovely, often tragic' HELEN DUNMORE 'In her writing, an almost bardic ability to hold us with stories coexists with a blazing commitment to a moral view of human distinction and human turpitude that recalls Wharton without the cynicism and Conrad without the weightiness ... Her voice, laconical and richly sensuous, sings out with a note of unequivocal love for the people she is setting down on the page' MARINA WARNER