Alexander's Bridge

Engineer Bartley Alexander appears to have happy life in Boston with a successful career and a beautiful wife. He has been commissioned to design Moorlock Bridge in Canada, the important project of his career. With the onset of middle age, he grows restless, that he reignites love affair with sweetheart of his youth, Irish actress Hilda Borgoyne. Willa Cather's first published novel, set in Boston, London, and Paris, is the story of a man unable to resolve the contradictions in his own nature. The central figures are Bartley Alexander, a world-famous engineer; his wife; Winifred, a Boston society matron; and his former love, Hilda Burgoyne, a London actress. Long considered an uncharacteristic production, in the light of recent scholarship Alexander's Bridge is seen to be closely linked to the body of Cather's work, thematically as well as in its use of myth and symbol. Bernice Slote's introduction considers the circumstances of its composition and its relationship to the later novels, particularly One of Ours, The Professor's House, and Lucy Gayheart. The text has been entirely reset from the first (1912) edition.