318 Western American Literature as well as numerous allusions to literature, art, music, architecture, and vernacular culture that make up Cather’sfictional and historical worlds are identified, indexed, and discussed in enlightening amplification. This engaging encyclopedic entry into the imaginative space of her fiction began with more than four decades ofJohn March’s exhaustive traditional bibliographic and archival research into the material and historic backgrounds for narrative details found in Cather’s “kingdom of art” and was completed through the contemporary computer-assisted fact-checking, indexing, and editorial scholarship of Arnold and Thornton. In the transformation ofMarch’sinitial manuscriptfor a “Handbook ofWilla Cather” into A Reader’s Companion to the Fiction of Willa Cather, Thornton and Arnold separated entries for Cather’s essays and poems for a projected second volume of the Companion, brought March’sgendered references into keeping with contemporary criti cal perspectives, and added detail from March’s own notes to enlarge entries for signifi cant characters. In theirgreatest contribution for current readers, Arnold andThornton added indexing of every entry in March’s manuscriptwith the fictional workfrom which it is drawn. Where March presumed readers would only come to his handbook directly from Cather’s fiction, the added indexing has made the Companion a reference book reward ing to readfor itself. Read separately, the editors suggest, the Companionshould provide a productive point of departure and accompaniment for further Cather scholarship. As such, it is “a true reader’scompanion and inherently more than a reference guide to the fiction.”As a result of this approach, the Companion feels somewhat more like a lively dialogue, a complex conversation involving innumerable interconnections between Cather’s short stories and novels and the continuing curiosities and concerns of her committed readership, than an alphabetically ordered dictionary. MARKSCHLENZ University ofCalifornia, SantaBarbara Willa Cather’s Transforming Vision:NewFranceand theAmericanNortheast. ByGary Brienzo. (Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania: Susquehanna University Press, 1994. 120 pages.) In his study, Willa Cather’s Transforming Vision:NewFranceand theAmericanNortheast, GaryBrienzo’spurpose isto demonstrate the importance ofthe American Northeastand New France to Cather asan individual and asanartist. Consequently, he begins bynoting Cather’s personal connections to the Northeast, her interest in French culture, and the literary influence of Sarah Orne Jewett whose “affectionate admonitions helped form Cather’sbeliefs aboutwhat made life worth living, including her ideas ofhow and where to live.”Brienzo notes similarities betweenJewett’s and Cather’s themes, such as strong women, spirituality, domesticity, tradition and artistry, and their symbols, including home and fire. After laying this foundation, Brienzo argues that Cather employs these themes not only in Shadows on theRockbut also in her earlyfiction. At the heart ofhis studyBrienzo returns to ShadowsontheRockto explore howCather interprets the history ofNewFrance. Focusing on Bishop Laval, Count de Frontenac and Jean Baptiste de Saint-Vallier, Brienzo identifies the biographies and historical sources Cather relies upon to create her fictionalized versions ofthese historical figures. Brienzo demonstrates that Cather draws on a number of texts to create a Bishop Laval who is Reviews 319 more amiable andfatherly than the one presented byhis biographers; her Laval isamore “humanized” Laval, for Cather extends his character, presenting him in a range of situations to support Quebec as “the emblem of stability, tradition, and peace.” Her Count Frontenac embodies “the same encompassing and boundary-free New World Order,”thus representing secular order while Bishop Laval represents spiritual order. Brienzo’s particular contributions to Cather studies are most apparent in this chapter, where he includes primary research which illuminates Cather’s methods of composition while providing a new basis for interpreting her text. In subsequent chapters Brienzo returns to a consideration of Cather’s themes, particularly the notion ofhome and familyas embodied byCecile Auclair. Resuming the larger perspective found in the beginning of his book, Brienzo concludes by examining how the ideals ofNew France and New England are depicted in Cather’s last novels and short stories, focusing particularlyon ObscureDestinies, Lucy Gayheart, and Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Byhis final chapter, Brienzo has fulfilled the promise implicit in his title, transform ing a reader’s view of Cather by revealing her as a writer of many regions and by demonstrating that one region withwhich she consistentlyaligns herselfisthe Northeast. ELIZABETHA. TURNER University ofNebraska-Lincoln ThePrairie...