SOURCE: Rosowski, Susan J. “Obscure Destinies: Unalterable Realities.” In The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather's Romanticism, pp. 189–204. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

In the following essay, Rosowski contends that Cather's main theme in Obscure Destinies is the acceptance of life as apparent reality, in contrast to her earlier themes of idealism.

Wonderful things do happen even in the dullest places.¹

In the decade before Obscure Destinies appeared in 1932, it seemed that Willa Cather had turned from Nebraska as resolutely as had her characters Claude Wheeler and Niel Herbert. After One of Ours and A Lost Lady, she had written novels about other places (Michigan, the Southwest, Quebec), distant times (the mid-nineteenth century, the seventeenth century), and historical people (French priests in New Mexico and immigrants to Canada). But for the three stories included in Obscure Destinies, Cather returned to memories of Red Cloud and Webster County. Childhood friends reappear...