Songcatcher tells the story of a woman who goes into the mountains of Appalachia in 1907, and finds the people singing British ballads that are almost unchanged since they arrived there 200 years earlier. It is also a feminist parable transplanted to earlier times, revealing too much consciousness of modern values. I m more comfortable with the women I find in Willa Cather s novels, who live at about the same time, who strive to be independent and to be taken seriously, and yet are entirely in and of their worlds. The characters in a serious historical story should not know what happens decades later.