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#1453: Willa Cather to Sister Mary Agatha, June 23, 1939

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⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ My dear Sister Mary Agatha1:

A long siege of influenza kept me from answering your very kind letter about “Shadows on the Rock”3. I am glad that you came to like the book better, as you knew it better. Your first impression was right, however; it is not so good a book as “Death Comes for the Archbishop”4. The Archbishop was written at a time when I was very happy and full of admiration for Father Lamy5, his work, his Cathedral, and the whole of his great diocese. “Shadows on the Rock” was written during the three years when my mother6 was dying of paralysis, and I had not the same vitality to give the book. But writing, after all, is, like religion, a “Way of life”; a way of looking at life. Sometimes we see clearly, and sometimes our vision is clouded. But one is always the same person., at heart.

Thanking you again, I am

Faithfully yours, Willa Cather