Willa Cather was a writer of varied ability. She wrote essays, poetry, short stories, and novels. It is her novels that contain the most colorful depiction of life on the Nebraska prairies and in the small Nebraska towns, and these novels have won the widest acclaim. Willa Cather's ability and desire to write of Nebraska life stemmed from her childhood there. She loved Nebraska and the honest, stubborn pioneer; therefore, her characterization of these people are her most outstanding ones. She had known several pioneer women whom she particularly liked or who particularly interested her, and these women all became a part of her novels which she wrote several years after she left the West. [...]