The Troll Garden was Willa Cather’s first published collection of short stories. It included: Flavia and Her Artists, The Sculptor’s Funeral, A Death in the Desert, The Garden Lodge, The Marriage of Phaedra, A Wagner Matinee, and Paul’s Case.

Well-crafted tales, they are important harbingers of her future works. And the stories are related: often about people’s secret desires, unrequited love; about poverty and how a daily grind wears away every noble impulse in a person; how people want what they cannot have.

It’s a book about hunger and thirst, and the darkness we turn to.

The precise language, profound psychological study, and finely honed plots that characterize her later work are on full display.

In the fateful interaction of her characters, and her absorbing narrative, she displays the virtuoso storytelling skills that have made her one of the most admired masters of American fiction

WILLA CATHER (1873-1947) was an American author who achieved recognition for her classic novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers! The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1922.