Death Comes for the Archbishop

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 show more 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. show less

This book had been on my TBR for years, I picked it up this particular week because of a Bookopoly prompt (long story) I'd made to pick a book from a friend's list of books that had influenced her. And I am just so grateful for the whole weird series of steps that led to me finally picking this book off of the shelf.

I loved every bit of this. Somehow the spareness fo Cather's writing is perfectly suited to the deserts of the American Southwest. This book has been praised by many smarter than me, so let me just say this: Despite this book not always following "the rules" of a typical narrative novel, EVERYTHING about this book feels very much on purpose, and evidence of a master practicing her craft.

I loved the setting, I loved learning show more more about the old mission churches of the Southwest and the various cultures that collided there. Amazing book. show less

When novels tell stories of a life they usually employ a misleading device, namely a unified and continuous narrative. None of us experience our lives this way. We don't have an unbroken chain of first person observation, we have snatches of memory, a cloud of discrete observations. One could draw a line through this cloud and call it "the story of my life," but the reality is the cloud, not the line. Cather captures this, and the shape of her protagonist's life emerges indirectly. Cather may be too kind, too idealistic at times. I found myself wondering, while reading this book if Menken had ever read her work. What would that caustic cynic say about her, about excellence so deeply entwined with an opposition to cynicism?

Let me start off by saying that this is a good book, probably a very good book. But it doesn't speak to me as personally as it clearly speaks to others. There are parts of it that I love and parts of it that I definitely do not love. Overall, I'm glad I've read it but having read both this and My Antonia in the last few months I have come to the conclusion that Willa Cather will never be one of my favourite writers, as she is for many people.

Based on the true story of Archbishop Lamy, the first Archbishop of New Mexico, Death Comes to the Archbishop tells the story of Father Jean Marie Latour, from his appointment in 1850 as Vicar Apostolic of New Mexico, a time when that territory was newly annexed to the United States, to his death as show more the retired Archbishop many years later. With no overriding plot to speak of the book consists of a series of vignettes of Father Latour's life and more that anything presents a moving picture of his friendship with his fellow Frenchman who has accompanied him throughout his missionary work, Father Joseph Vaillant.

The strength of this book for me lies in the way that Cather paints the landscape of New Mexico. Her descriptions are at times extremely evocative and almost poetic:

From the flat red sea of sand rose great rock mesas, generally Gothic in outline, resembling vast cathedrals. They were not crowded together in disorder, but placed in wide spaces, long vistas between. This plain might once have been an enormous city, all the smaller quarters destroyed by time, only the public buildings left - piles of architecture that were like mountains.

The description of the landscape was a strength in My Antonia too, but I found that landscape described in that book hostile, a landscape that I could not imagine growing to love. The landscapes described in [Death comes for the Archbishop] has the opposite effect: I can begin to understand the love that the Archbishop comes to feel for his adopted country. And here the isolated one-family homesteads of the prairie are replaced by Indian pueblos, small Spanish villages and towns where the churches are old enough to have fallen into ruin. It's a country with a patchwork history which I found fascinating.

But holding back my overall rating of the book is Cather's portrayal of her characters. In dealing with her minor characters, at times it seemed that rather than dealing with individuals she was presenting them as archetypal examples of 'the Mexican peasant', ' the Pueblo Indian' and so on. And while at times she gives glimpses into the motivations of Father Latour and his affection for Father Vaillant, I found the narrative was often more flatly descriptive of events with little insight into the feelings of either character. So neither of the main characters really came alive for me in the way that the landscape did. show less

Willa Cather's love affair with the written word seeps into every corner of this wonderful novel. I don't even care what she writes about; I just appreciate her brilliant use of the English language. In this case, her story of two French priests in the New Mexico territory in the 1800's, something I might not particularly care about, is so full of nuance and pathos and depth of character that I became easily sucked in. New Mexico becomes a character as well, a much beloved character. Just a brilliant book that is more about friendship than religion and the natural goodness of the New Mexican people than it is about religion. The land itself is mystical and divine. And harsh and unforgiving. Just like religion.

Featuring the legitimately wholesome, vilely corrupt, and a dollop of the spectrum in-between of the Catholic church's missionary undertakings in the vast stretch of desert currently known as the American southwest. I was hesitant to embark on this one given the subject matter but Cather never disappoints. Sometimes, you've simply had enough and the whole village joins together to see if priests can fly.

"... a missionary's life; to plant where another shall reap." Or at least it should be!

A good priest and more than that – a good man - Father Jean Marie Latour leaves his life in Italy forever to take up priesthood in the New World in Ohio. He finds it ugly and depressing and in 1851 is happy to become the apostolic vicar in the new territory of New Mexico.

New Mexico has recently been ceded to the Americans, but most of the inhabitants are Mexican or Native including the warlike Navajos and Apaches. Even in the 1800's it's already an old land with hundreds of years of church history. And it’s very empty – bare red rock, immense deserts to be covered on muleback and small settlements barely worthy of being called towns.

The Father is a gentle, humble and respectful man, quietly living his faith. As the nearly forty show more years of his career pass, his reputation and respect grow until he becomes an Archbishop.

This novel is as humbly quiet, deep and good as Father Latour himself. I found it wonderfully descriptive of the Father and his challenges, the people he worked with and the sparse New Mexico landscape. The landscape with its vast spaces is a character in its own right. Without this haunting setting the novel couldn’t have existed. show less