Customer Reviews

Kate M. Cleary: A Literary Biography with Selected Works (Willa Cather Scholarly Edition)

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With thorough and painstaking research Susanne George has skillfully woven the biography of the woman writer, Kate M. McPhelim Cleary, into an interesting story. Born in Canada in 1862, Kate married Michael Cleary in 1884 and the couple moved to Hubbell, Nebraska, a small frontier town only four years old at the time of their arrival. Kate had been writing poems and stories for several years, publishing her first poem at fourteen and her first novel at fifteen. Her mother was also a writer. Kate found a dear and lifelong friend when she met Elia Wilkinson Peattie who wrote for the Omaha World Herald and whose husband was the managing editor. Kate's husband, a businessman in Hubbell became increasing withdrawn from his family, partly, it seems because of ill health and he was often in Chicago recuperating when Kate needed him most. Kate continued to write as often as she could although busy with child rearing and keeping house, often without Michael. The summer of 1865, two of their young daughters died while he was away and although she and her son were ill, she had to cope alone. The family moved back to Illinois in 1898. She kept writing despite her own ill health and other setbacks, including time in an institution for morphine addiction where she nearly lost her mind and only the intervention of her friend Elia, who twice saw the spirit of Kate's long dead mother,saved her.
The author has reprinted some of Kate's short stories, articles, and poems in the back of the book.
Eunice Boeve, author of Ride a Shadowed Trail