An odd choice of title, on the face of it, as the central character does not become an archbishop until well into the closing pages of the novel, and his death is one of the gentlest and least dramatic in the whole of modern fiction.

This is essentially a historical novel about the lives of two French missionary priests charged with setting up a new diocese after the US annexation of New Mexico in 1848, where Father Vaillant is the tough lower-class bruiser with the key human skills and sympathies for dealing with people from outside civilised European culture, while his officer-class friend and colleague Father Latour deals with the local gentry and keeps going off on long journeys to attend management conferences.

Both priests are presented as pious, idealistic, self-sacrificing and generally lacking in any interesting human vices (except maybe a taste for French cooking), in a way that might otherwise be rather tedious and even nauseating, but seems to be forgivable — and even appropriate — here, in the context of the epic framework Cather sets up, where the New Mexico scenery and the interplay of Spanish-Mexican and Native American cultures in it is always more foreground than background. Latour and Vaillant spend a lot of the book being tiny dots of black in a widescreen panorama of desert, cactuses and mesas. There isn’t really a direct plot, we learn about Latour and Vaillant and the transitional society of the new Territory through a series of Don-Camilloesque vignettes, and Cather takes the opportunity to remind us along the way of some of the values of Native American culture — particularly when it comes to living in harmony with nature — and the ways that they have often been mistreated by the US authorities (but not, apparently, by the Roman Catholic Church…).

Very odd, and not really my sort of book, but I enjoyed Cather’s writing all the same, and I liked the description of the cosy, lifelong friendship of the two priests, even if it did rely on a few clichés. ( )

In the middle of the 19th century, so much of what will become the western United States has yet to be settled. The leaders of the Catholic Church are eager to establish a diocese in the New Mexico territory that will be independent of control from church officials in Mexico. A young French priest, Father Jean Marie Latour, who has been posted in the eastern United States for a while, is selected for the task. Joined by Father Joseph Vaillant, a life-long friend who serves as his vicar and confidant, Latour makes his way to Santa Fe where his presence meets with considerable resistance from both the established clergy and the local Indian, Mexican, and American parishioners. Over time, however, the gentle and steadfast efforts of the two priests prevail and the church prospers along with the town and the country. Eventually, Latour’s parish is raised to the level of an archdiocese, over which he serves first as Bishop and then as Archbishop. Near the end of his days, almost forty years after arriving in the region, he realizes his dream of building a great cathedral to serve the needs of the people long after he is gone.

That is the basic story of Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather’s celebrated novel that provides a fictionalized account of the real-life exploits of Jean-Baptiste Lamy, the true first Archbishop of Santa Fe. In Cather’s spare and succinct prose, this is a tale covering events that transpired over a period of several decades, but it does so in an episodic fashion that makes the book feel more like a collection of interconnected short vignettes. What I found to be strangely absent in the writing, though, was a real sense of the religious fervor and faith that the two priests must have felt to undertake the audacious mission of establishing a new church in a hostile environment amongst people with a completely different spiritual orientation. On the other hand, where the novel really shines is in the author’s depiction of the New Mexican and Southwestern landscapes. There are countless passages scattered throughout the story that are simply stunning—breathtakingly beautiful, in fact. I suspect that it will be these descriptions of the natural world, rather than the details of Latour/Lamy’s accomplishments, that will stick with me the farther removed I become from having read the book. ( )

I rarely read a book twice and to read one three times is almost unheard of but this is one of the rare exceptions where that happened. I first read it long ago as a teenager at a time when I made frequent trips into New Mexico. Cather's description of the state and its history was so spot on and poignant that it instantly became one of my favorites and forever made the American Southwest for me a place of almost mythical beauty.

This fictional biography of a real life person, Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy. Many people may shy away from this book because they suspect it to be a book about religion. Trust me, it isn't. Yes, the main characters are Catholic priests but that isn't what this book is about. It's about service to others, a gentle tale that tells the story of men who spent their entire lives enduring incredible hardships so that other people's lives may be valued.

This story is as heartwarming to the soul as chicken soup is to the stomach. It is one of those books that leaves the reader saddened when they finish the last page because there is no more. I guess maybe I should plan another trip back to New Mexico. As with this book, it has been far too long between visits. ( )

This book is brilliant! How Ms. Cather could so vividly describe scenes, people, and their thoughts is extraordinary. In this book she takes the life of one man and very intuitively describes his past, his present, and the past and present for those people around him and his interactions with him. Set in the American Southwest in the 1850s to nearly 1890, she describes the challenging, but patient life of a French-born priest amidst the Mexicans and Indians to understand their ways and to convert them. ( )

her masterpiece