Publisher's Synopsis
A Lost Lady by Willa Cather Willa Cather's A Lost Lady was first published in 1923. It tells the story of Marian Forrester and her husband, Captain Daniel Forrester who live in the Western town of Sweet Water, along the Transcontinental Railroad. The novel is written in the third person, but is mostly written from the perspective of Niel Herbert, a young man who grows up in Sweet Water and witnesses the decline of Mrs. Forrester, for whom he feels very deeply, and also of the West itself from the idealized age of noble pioneers to the age of capitalist exploitation. The novel is also regarded as having been an influence on F. Scott Fitzgerald, as Marian Forrester was an inspiration for his Daisy Buchanan character in The Great Gatsby.