LUCY GAYHEART

My local library has a bookstore where it sells used books that people have donated. Unfortunately, for mysterious reasons, the store is only open on weekday afternoons, so I was never able to visit it regularly until I started working from home on Wednesdays. Now one of my favorite Wednesday treats is to spend my lunch break biking to the library, conducting my business (as a library junkie, I nearly always have an item waiting to be picked up or due to be returned), and perusing the bookstore. Often the pickings are slim, but occasionally I find strays that seem worth the 50 cents or dollar it costs to rescue them, and now and then I stumble across a gem. Shortly after finishing (and adoring) My Antonia, I scanned the “C” shelves in the hopes of finding myself a copy and instead encountered this unknown-to-me Cather title…in a first edition. Although it wasn’t in mint condition, for $2 it was a steal.

This bargain would have been thrilling enough on its own, but then I read the book and really liked it. Lucy Gayheart is one of Cather’s later novels (1935) and centers on a young pianist who leaves her small Nebraska town to study music in Chicago. The story explores not only the contrast between urban and rural life, but also the quest for self-actualization, the joys and struggles of the pursuit of art, and the potential power of art and faith to overcome tragedy: “What if Life itself were the sweetheart?” Lucy ultimately realizes. “It was like a lover waiting for her in distant cities—across the sea; drawing her, enticing her, weaving a spell over her.” As always, Cather describes the rich interior lives of her varied characters (in addition to Lucy’s point of view, we also get that of Harry Gordon, the rich, rather boorish man who courts her) as clearly and beautifully as she describes the Nebraska landscape. Although I didn’t fall as deeply in love with it as I did with My Antonia or O Pioneers!, I do think that this romantic, poignant book deserves to be much better known than it is. If you’re a Cather fan, seek it out.