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Death comes for the archbishop by Willa…
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Death comes for the archbishop (original 1927; edition 1990)

by Willa Cather

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
5,8961461,676 (3.98)2 / 787
Willa Cather's best known novel is an epic--almost mythic--story of a single human life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows--gently, all the while contending with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Out of these events, Cather gives us an indelible vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended.… (more)
Member:morieel
Title:Death comes for the archbishop
Authors:Willa Cather
Info:New York : Vintage Books, 1990.
Collections:Read but unowned, Favorites
Rating:*****
Tags:American literature, New Mexico, historical fiction, Catholicism, favorites

Work Information

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (1927)

  1. 00
    The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich (noveltea)
  2. 01
    Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan (inge87)
    inge87: Biography of the real-life Jean Marie Latour — Archbishop Lamy
  3. 01
    The Professor's House by Willa Cather (shaunie)
    shaunie: If you enjoy Cather's wonderful writing this is just as well written and has a much more enthralling story.
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Showing 1-5 of 143 (next | show all)
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. ( )
  browner56 | Feb 16, 2024 |
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. ( )
  Unkletom | Dec 29, 2023 |
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. ( )
  mapg.genie | Oct 31, 2023 |
her masterpiece
  SrMaryLea | Aug 22, 2023 |
Racist and boring. Hard pass. ( )
  PaperbackPirate | Aug 19, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 143 (next | show all)
Each event in this book is concrete, yet symbolic, and opens into living myth. The reader is invited to contemplate the question: What is a life well lived? This question is asked in a story so fine it brings the old words “wisdom” and “beauty” to life again.
 

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Willa Catherprimary authorall editionscalculated
Byatt, A. S.Introductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary Bishop from America were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome.
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But in reality the Bishop was not there at all [on his sickbed, in his wandering imagination]; he was standing in a tip-tilted green field among his native mountains, and he was trying to give consolation to a young man who was being torn in two before his eyes by the desire to go and the necessity to stay. He was trying to forge a new Will in that devout and exhausted priest; and the time was short, for the diligence for Paris was already rumbling down the mountain gorge.
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Wikipedia in English (1)

Willa Cather's best known novel is an epic--almost mythic--story of a single human life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows--gently, all the while contending with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Out of these events, Cather gives us an indelible vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended.

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One summer evening in the year of 1848 three Cardinals and a missionary, dining in a villa near Rome, decide the fate of a simple parish priest, the Frenchman Jean Marie Latour. He is to go to New Mexico to win for Catholicism the South-West of America, a country where the Faith has slumbered for centuries. There, together with his old friend Father Vaillant, Latour makes his home. To the carnelian hills and ochre-yellow deserts of this almost pagan land he brings the refined traditions of French culture and Christian belief. Slowly, gently he reforms and revivifies, after forty years of love and service achieving a final reconciliation between his faith and the sensual peasant people of New Mexico: a harmony embodied in the realisation of his most cherished dream - a Romanesque cathedral, carved from the Mexican rock, gold as sunlight.
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