Cather's brother Douglass had taken a job with the Santa Fe Railroad, was stationed in Winslow, Arizona, and, in 1912, Cather visited him. From March to June, she traveled through the Southwest, soaking up the legends and history of its Spanish and Indians peoples, and she would draw on these experiences in The Professor's House (1925) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).
For as long as her family remained in Nebraska, Cather returned to Red Cloud for frequent visits. She loved the prairie and often thought about giving up writing and settling down on a quarter section of land, but always when she was in Nebraska, a sense of loneliness and isolation overwhelmed her and she fled back east.
In 1916, Isabelle McClung married violinist Jan Hambourg. The marriage was as a painful, almost devastating shock to Cather, who disliked change; she felt that she was losing her best friend. In the summer of 1917, the Hambourgs invited her to visit them at the Shattuck Inn in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, and Cather stayed there throughout the summer and fall. Working on My Ántonia, the quiet and closeness of nature inspired her, and for many years she continued to work in Jaffrey from mid-September until late November.
