The Cinderella story of Thea Kronborg, rescued from obscurity in the American Midwest by Cather's exquisite voice. In her writing, an almost bardic ability to hold us with stories coexists with a blazing commitment to a moral view of human distinction and human turpitude that recalls Wharton without the cynicism and Conrad without the weightiness ... Her voice, laconical and richly sensuous, sings out with a note of unequivocal love for the people she is setting down on the page