SOURCE: Bush, Sargent, Jr. “‘The Best Years’: Willa Cather's Last Story and Its Relation to Her Canon.” Studies in Short Fiction 5, no. 3 (spring 1968): 269–74.

In the following essay, Bush maintains that the power of Cather's fiction did not diminish with “The Best Years,” as other critics have asserted.

Willa Cather's last completed short story, “The Best Years,” is a work that has usually been either downgraded or ignored by her critics. With the exception of some appreciative general comments by George N. Kates,¹ the consensus has been that the story is not up to Miss Cather's full capability in the genre. An extreme statement of this view describes the story as “only the somewhat querulous writing of old age.”² I should like to suggest, however, that “The Best Years” does convey much of the power characteristic of Willa Cather's best novels and short stories.

Works such as My Ántonia...