148 Charles Street: A Novel

Tracy Daugherty

Apr 2022 · U of Nebraska Press

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Tracy Daugherty's historical novel 148 Charles Street explores the fascinating story of Willa Cather's friendship with Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant. The women shared a passion for writing, for New York, and for the desert Southwest, but their sensibilities could not have been more different: Cather, the novelist of lyrical landscapes and aesthetic refinement, and Sergeant, the muckraking journalist and literary activist. Their friendship is sorely tested when Cather fictionalizes a war that Sergeant covered as a reporter, calling into question, for both women, the uses of art and journalism, the power of imagination and witness. 148 Charles Street is a testament to the bonds that endure despite disagreements and misunderstandings, and in the relentlessness of a vanishing past.

148 Charles Street explores, as only fiction can, the two writers' interior lives, and contrasts Sergeant's literary activism with Cather's more purely aesthetic approach to writing.

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Tracy Daugherty is distinguished emeritus professor of English and Creative Writing at Oregon State University. In addition to biographies of Joan Didion and Joseph Heller, he has published several novels, including High Skies, Axeman's Jazz, The Boy Orator, Desire Provoked, and What Falls Away.