"Chasing Bright Medusas should appeal to anyone -- novice or expert -- ready to explore Cather's life and work in the company of a critic so alert to the shimmering subtlety of her style and the hard years of effort that went into crystallizing it." --The Washington PostA tender biography of one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century and an elegant exploration of artistic endurance, as told by a lifelong lover of Willa Cather's work The story of Willa Cather is defined by a lifetime of determination, struggle, and gradual emergence. Some show their full powers early, yet Cather was the opposite--she took her time and transformed herself by stages. The writer who leapt to the forefront of American letters with O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My