3 h 16 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
He builds bridges that must never fall, but his own life carries a strain he cannot settle.
Bartley Alexander has a respected name, a gracious Boston home and a great engineering project in Canada. His wife, Winifred, trusts him. Yet success leaves him restless. When his former teacher, Professor Lucius Wilson, visits, he senses a change in the man whose career he follows with pride.
In London, actress Hilda Burgoyne brings Bartley close to memories of youth and freedom. Between Boston and London, he feels pulled toward two different selves. Willa Cather’s brief first novel explores marriage, ambition and divided loyalties, asking what happens when the life a man builds no longer holds all his desires.
What you’ll discover
- A builder under strain Follow a successful engineer whose private unrest unsettles the ordered life he seems to command.
- Trust within a marriage Meet Winifred, whose calm intelligence and trust give Bartley’s divided loyalties their quiet emotional weight.
- The pull of youth Discover Hilda, a lively, independent actress bound up with Bartley’s memories of a freer self.
- Success with a cost Explore the distance between youthful hopes and the person ambition helps a man become.
- Pressure beneath careful manners Enter drawing rooms where gracious surfaces conceal unrest, in a story kept brief and tightly shaped.
Who will love it
For readers who love short novels about marriage, ambition and divided loyalties, and anyone curious about Willa Cather's earliest work.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A builder of bridges at the height of his powers
- An old teacher sees that something has changed
- A woman from the past waits in London
- Two lives and the strain of keeping both
- What the book says about ambition, desire and age
- How Cather tells it and where it sits in her work
Who’s who
- Bartley AlexanderA successful bridge engineer in his middle years, admired in Boston, who feels a restless pull toward the energy of his younger self.
- Winifred AlexanderBartley's wife, a calm and intelligent woman who keeps a gracious home and trusts her husband.
- Professor Lucius WilsonBartley's former teacher, a gentle older man who visits the household and senses that his old student has changed.
- Hilda BurgoyneAn actress in London whom Bartley knew in his youth, independent, lively and bound up with his memories of freedom.
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- Large print hardcover
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Alexander's Bridge
by Willa Cather · 1912
A Boston bridge engineer feels the pull of an old love in London, putting his settled life under hidden strain.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 6
A builder of bridges at the height of his powers
The story opens on Bartley Alexander in middle age. He is a civil engineer who has made his name by building bridges, and his work has taken him to many places. Now he lives in Boston, where he is known as a man who gets great things done. His colleagues trust his judgment, and younger men look up to him.
He is married to Winifred, a woman of calm intelligence and good taste. Their home is orderly and warm, and she supports him without fuss. On the surface the match is a happy one. Cather presents this life with respect, and she makes clear that Bartley has earned it by hard work.
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What is Alexander's Bridge about?
It is about Bartley Alexander, a respected bridge engineer in Boston whose settled life is shaken when he is drawn back toward a woman from his youth in London. The book studies ambition, desire and divided loyalty.
Is Alexander's Bridge Willa Cather's first novel?
Yes. It appeared in 1912 and was her first novel, after her short stories and magazine work. She later turned to the Nebraska prairie in O Pioneers! and spoke of this earlier book as an apprentice effort.
What does the bridge mean in Alexander's Bridge?
The bridge works as an image of both skill and hidden strain. Bartley builds structures that must carry great loads, and the book suggests a person also has limits, and that unseen stresses matter.
The author
Willa Cather
1873–1947 · American novelist
Willa Cather was an American novelist celebrated for her portraits of prairie life on the Great Plains. My Ántonia, her 1918 story of a Bohemian immigrant girl in Nebraska, remains one of the most beloved American novels of its era.
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