Coming to the end of this book was like a sad farewell to some very good friends. Father Joseph, Father Letour, their many friends and acquaintances who built solid and strong relationships with them over the years, and their country. Oh my. Their beautiful country.Father Joseph and Father Letour, both originally from France, were sent to the land of New Mexico shortly after it had been annexed. They were young men whose mission was to bring spiritual counsel and comfort to the people of this Ne...

But in the Old World he found himself homesick for the New. It was a feeling he could not explain; a feeling that old age did not weigh so heavily upon a man in New Mexico as in the Puy-de Dome. ...In New Mexico he always awoke a young man; not until he rose and began to shave did he realize that he was growing older. His first consciousness was a sense of the light dry wind blowing in through the windows, with the fragrance of hot sun and sage-brush and sweet clover; a wind that made one's body...

What can I say about this book? It was beautiful, it was peaceful, it was perfect. A book I will re-read periodically, when I need to leave the world behind.There is no real plot other than the lives of two French priests who come to Santa Fe in 1850 to create a Catholic mission to serve the Indians and Mexicans. Father LaTour and Father Vaillant will be riding their mules in my head forever, spreading kindness.Beautiful, peaceful, perfect.

This book was a very pleasant surprise! Not that I was expecting I wouldn’t like it, I just never know with classics on must read lists. Often it is hard for me to determine what about the book gets people excited about it or what exactly made it a classic. With Death Comes for the Archbishop, it was not difficult to see the appeal at all!I listened to this book in its entirety in one sitting on the road coming back from Spring Break. The storytelling and the characters were a great way to pass

Two young French priests newly out of the seminary in France, where they first met, ( destined to become bishops of the Catholic Church, in the New World , one an Archbishop ) became close friends until death struck. Jean Marie Latour ( Jean -Baptiste Lamy the original Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico ) and Joseph Vaillant ( Joseph Projectus Machebeuf, Denver, Colorado's, first bishop) recruited by the Irish born bishop from Cincinnati, Ohio, for missionary work in America where only a relativ...

This book is a real monument, we are not talking only of Faith, but of friendship, of love for people, for a land, that is the New Mexico. I read this book deliberately slowly, because in parallel I have turned to research the history of Old Mexico and the new Mexico... every historical event reported or references to precise geographical areas, was for me a real and historical discovery that Willa Cather makes us to know.The story of these two priests, Father Latour and Father Valillant, who li...

[2.9] A plotless, meandering novel with stunning descriptions of the New Mexican landscape in the mid 1800s. Cather punctuates her lavish verbal paintings with anecdotes about two well intentioned French priests who attempt to root out the corruption practiced by fellow clergy and civilize the "natives." Considered by many to be Cather's masterpiece, it is my least favorite novel of hers and I was mostly bored.

“Father Vaillant began pacing restlessly up and down as he spoke, and the Bishop watched him, musing. It was just this in his friend that was dear to him. ‘Where there is great love there are always miracles,’ he said at length. ‘One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming s...

Rating: 5* of fiveThis book is a survivor. Closing in on 90 years after its initial appearance, it's still on must-read lists. For a good reason: It's a neither-fish-not-fowl book. As a history, it's a good novel; as a novel, it's fascinating history. Enough fiction was larded onto the flesh of New Mexico's post-annexation history to make this a tasty roast.Like a roast, it's served in slices, as the stories of Latour/Lamy's progress in creating the Archdiocese of New Mexico are too numerous to

Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather Death Comes for the Archbishop is a 1927 novel by American author Willa Cather. It concerns the attempts of a Catholic bishop and a priest to establish a diocese in New Mexico Territory.The narrative is based on two historical figures, Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf and rather than any one singular plot, is the stylized re-telling of their lives serving as Roman Catholic clergy in New Mexico. The narrative has frequent digressions,

Reading Road Trip 2020Current location: New MexicoAh, he thought—the Image, the physical form of Love!As I arrived at the last chapter of this book (also titled “Death Comes for the Archbishop”), I was struck with a melancholia worthy of a Brontë sister. No spoiler alerts here. The title, after all, is Death Comes for the Archbishop. It was coming for him all along, just like it's coming for you and it's coming for me.I had to take a mental break before I tackled the ending of this stunning litt...

I'm glad I didn't know Kit Carson would be a character in Death Comes for the Archbishop; if I had, I might never have opened the book. Indeed, a weight of glumness descended on me as I realized the entire narrative would take place in New Mexico Territory, between the years 1851-1888. I foresaw dust, and tumbleweed clumps, unrestrainedly tumbling through bleak moonlike terrain. These things hold little allure for me; they're why I don't watch westerns. And it's true, the novel is filled with de...

Late 1800's and The Catholic Church sends two priests to reawaken the lessening faith in New Mexico and eventually other territories. Every chapter tackles a new story, a different priest, and the lives they are living in the different missions. Some had quite an opulent lifestyle, some had children and some had amassed a great deal of money. The descriptions of the landscape are masterfully done, and the distance between them that the Bishop had to travel was awe inspiring, especially on mule.

As an adolescent, I took this book off the library shelf (I was looking through the C’s after already having made my way through the A’s and B’s), read the inner flap, thought it sounded boring and didn’t read any Cather until about five years ago. It’s a good thing I reshelved the book then, as my younger self absolutely would’ve found this boring and maybe I would never have read any Cather after that. That would’ve been a pity. For some reason, though, I still remember the look and feel of th...

Oh... my... God. This is beautiful. I'm only halfway through it but I don't care how it ends; every chapter is so complete in itself, every word such unmitigated pleasure that I would be stunned – absolutely floored – if Cather somehow fumbled the ball in the next 150 pages. This is it. The work of a writer with nothing to prove. A writer so humble, her words so transparent, that she seems to disappear behind the curtain of the text, her elegant shadow barely visible in its folds. At age twenty,...

Willa Cather captures the atmosphere and beauty of the American Southwest. It is for this reason alone one should read this book. It is a book of historical fiction about Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy (1814-1888), the first Archbishop of Santa Fe, and his vicar, Joseph Projectus Machebeuf (1815-1889), who would become the first Bishop of Denver. The missionaries were both from France and both Roman Catholic. Different in personality, yet they worked well together and came to have a deep affectio...

Highlight here is the incredible depiction of two missionaries who undertake the megaharsh task of converting the Navajos of New Mexico to Catholicism. It describes what happens when a new policy, or way of life, is instilled into people who are far away from the Old World. There are little vignettes of savagery, of holy manifestation (including a very succinct telling of San Diego and his visitation from the Virgin Mary), of hypocrites (of course!!!), etc. It is a vivid book, full of life & ima...

My only previous experience of reading Cather was last year, when I enjoyed My Ántonia. This book is very different, but shares the same frontier spirit and once again allows Cather the space to indulge her descriptive talents. This one is largely a factual story, although she changed the names of her leading characters. The Archbishop of the title Jean Latour can only be Jean-Baptiste Lamy, the first Bishop of New Mexico, and his vicar (and later Bishop in Colorado) Joseph Vaillant can only be

Although I have read this book before, that was long enough ago that this was essentially like reading the book for the first time.I believe this is the fifth of Cather's books that I have read (this both the first and the most recent) and confirms my appreciation for her skills in presenting the landscapes of the American West, the developing American way of life as it pushes west, and the varying and various peoples who lived on and from the land. Cather had mentioned the canyons of the Southw...

Read this in 2019 and wrote the first review below. Then just re-read it - see appended 2020 review at the end. I've increased the rating from 4 to 5 stars.14. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather published: 1927format: 300 page Vintage paperback from 1971acquired: from my in-laws, who probably bought it in 1971read: Feb 19-26, 2019time reading: 6 hr 51 min, 1.4 min/pagerating: 4My Listy review: My first Cather hits all sorts of uncomfortable spots - missionaries, superiority of the re...