"An artist, a peasant, and a scholar."

Last year right about this time, Travis was reading a trilogy by Norwegian author Sigrid Undset. He spent hours in the back of the bus as we traveled around Turkey, pouring over the pages. After we said goodbye for the rest of the summer, I immediately purchased the book in hopes of having something to share and talk about during our "across-the-pond summer." He was in Oxford, and I was in D.C., and I wanted to have as much in common with him as possible. So I picked up the book and fell in love with Kristin Lavransdatter and with Undset's writing. Undset was a Christian with a remarkable understanding of the human heart and soul. Her trilogy was convicting and hopeful, and taught me many things. Whenever I come to love an author, I want to read as much as possible by her. Now, I am working on her biography of Catherine of Sienna, a work I also highly recommend. Undset's writing style is well-suited to a biography of such an incredible woman.

In my research on Willa Cather for my thesis, I discovered that Undset and Cather were friends. Undset fled Norway in April 1940 when the Nazis invaded and met Cather in America. This was an exciting revelation, and I loved imagining their friendship. Cather's letters were recently published in a beautiful, big book. There are a few letters to Sigrid in the collection, and I also discovered a description of Undset that Cather wrote to a friend. Few descriptions of another human being are more beautiful or inspiring than this.

I want to tell you all about Madame Undset. She was here last night and spent the evening. Every time I see her she brings a large peace and relaxation. She is just all a great woman should be—and on a giant scale. She is a wonderful cook, a proficient scholar and has the literature of four languages at her fingers ends. There is nothing about wild flowers and garden flowers that she doesn't know, and she is able to make plants thrive and bloom in her very humble and gloomy little hotel rooms. Besides all this, there is in this woman a kind of heroic calm and warmth that rises above all the cruel tragedies and loss of fortune that the last three years have brought. She simply surmounts everything that has been wrecked about her and stands large and calm;—she who has lost everything seems still to possess everything, and the small pleasures can still make her rather cold eyes glow with marvelous pleasure. She combines in herself the nature of an artist, a peasant, and a scholar. She is cut on a larger pattern than any woman I have ever known, and it rests me just to sit and look at the strength that stood unshaken through so much. Of course, of her son's murder in a German concentration camp, she never speaks.

P.S. What I write you about Madame Undset, of course, is confidential. She wouldn't like me to advertise her, even in praise. She is self-sufficient, and would never think of trying to make a good impression on anybody. But I want you three to share with me the pleasure of realizing someone who is so meticulous about her cookery and her scholarship, and whom the German Army could not break.