In these nineteen stories Cather examines the plight of people hungry for beauty in a country that has no room for it; the mysterious arc of human lives; the ways in which the American frontier transformed the strangers who came to it, turning them imperceptibly into Americans. In these fictions, Cather displays her vast moral vision, her unerring sense of place, and her ability to find the one detail or episode that makes a closed life open wide in a single exhilarating moment.
Stories include: Flavia and Her Artists, The Garden Lodge, The Marriage of Phaedra, Coming Aphrodite!, The Diamond Mine, A Gold Slipper, Scandal, Paul's Case, A Wagner Matinee, The Sculptor's Funeral, A Death in the Desert, Neighbour Rosicky, Old Mrs. Harris, Two Friends, The Old Beauty, The Best Years, Before Breakfast, The Enchanted Bluff, Tom Outland's Story, Will Cather's Unfinished Avignon Story, and an article by George N. Kates.