Sapphira and the Slave Girl

Willa Cathers twelfth and final novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, is her most intense fictional engagement with political and personal conflict. Set in Cathers Virginia birthplace in 1856, the novel draws on family and local history and the escalating conflicts of the last years of slaveryconflicts in which Cathers family members were deeply involved, both as slave owners and as opponents of slavery. Cather, at five years old, appears as a character in an unprecedented first-person epilogue. Tapping her earliest memories, Cather powerfully and sparely renders a Virginia world that is simultaneously beautiful and, as she said, terrible. The historical essay and explanatory notes explore the novels grounding in family, local, and national history; show how southern cultures continually shaped Cathers life and work, culminating with this novel; and trace the progress of Cathers research and composition during years of grief and loss that she described as the worst of her life. More early drafts, including manuscript fragments, are available for Sapphira and the Slave Girl than for any other Cather novel, and the revealing textual essay draws on this rich resource to provide new insights into Cathers composition process.