Complete and unabridged, with 58 full-page plates by Winslow Homer, George Inness and Frederic Edwin Church. A doctor's protegee in a Colorado railroad town has a voice, and the novel follows every unglamorous step by which a voice becomes an instrument: the lessons, the borrowed money, the years of accompanying other people. Cather built Thea on the Wagnerian soprano Olive Fremstad, whom she interviewed and then followed about for a season. It is the longest and most patient of her books, and it is really about the price of choosing one thing over everything else. Fifty-eight plates by painters including Albert Bierstadt and Winslow Homer follow the story's westward light, from Glacier Station sunrises to girls in orchards.