Willa Cather's last novel set on the Great Plains,Lucy Gayheart, depicts a temperamental young woman, pianist Lucy Gayheart. In writing the novel, Cather drew on her lifelong interest in music, which plays an integral role in the book. The novel received very mixed responses among critics and reviewers after its 1935 publication. Willa Cather's penultimate novel tells the story of young Lucy Gayheart from Haverford, Nebraska who escapes life in a small town around the turn of the century to pursue a career in music. In Chicago, she attracts the attention of an aging but charismatic singer, Clement Sebastian, and comes to the discovery that she was not born to be an artist. What follows is a tale of love and loss. The Willa Cather Scholarly Edition includes a historical essay providing fresh insight into the novel and Cather's writing process, photographs and maps, and explanatory notes providing a full range of biographical and historical information. The novel, edited according to standards set by the Committee on Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association, presents a clean, authoritative text of the first edition.