Now living in a quiet desert community in Southern Utah amid sand and sagebrush at the base of a magnificent red sandstone mountain, Marilyn Arnold enjoys her retirement from years of academic achievement and service.

At the close of her successful teaching career at Brigham Young University, she was honored as an emeritus professor of English. She was also appointed to several administrative posts - one of them with Dallin H. Oaks, Director of the Center for the Study of Christian Values in Literature, and Dean of Graduate Studies. She still publishes through the Women's Research Institute at BYU, and lectures for the Utah Humanities Council Speakers' Bureau. In the St. George area she has served eight years on the Dixie State College Board of Trustees, and teaches a BYU literature class for adult learners.

An internationally recognized authority on novelist Willa Cather, Marilyn has emulated Cather's desire to write about her own experiences in her own homeland.