Willa Cather established a reputation for giving breath to the landscape of her fiction. She achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains:
- O Pioneers! (1913),
- The Song of the Lark (1915),
- My Ántonia (1918).

At the age of 33, she moved to New York City, her primary home for the rest of her life, though she also travelled widely and spent considerable time at her summer residence in New Brunswick.
Beginning in 1922, Cather spent summers on
Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, where she bought a cottage in Whale Cove, on the Bay of Fundy and where her penultimate short story, “Before Breakfast,” is set. It was the
only house she ever owned.
Willa Cather on Grand Manan. 1932, July.
ID DOL 606. The Willa Cather Archive. Phillip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection. Ed. Andrew Jewell. U of Nebraska-Lincoln. Web. 18 Feb. 2014
The Willa Cather Cottage, Grand Manan