The Professor's House is American writer Willa Cather's sixth novel, published in 1925. The novel was inspired by Cather's trip to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, where the remains of ancient Native American cliff dwellings have been preserved.
The novel is divided into three sections. The first and third sections tell the story of Godfrey St. Peter, a professor, academic, father, and husband who has reached middle age and finished the strenuous yet fulfilling work of his youth and early adulthood. St. Peter flounders and eventually begins to decline. Without the sustenance of his work, and beset by the corrupting influence of a materialistic society, his life becomes dull and...