![]() ![]() Few books reveal a sense of place with more eloquence and beauty than Cather’s Death Comes to the Archbishop the novel is unobtrusively an ode to the landscapes and people of the American Southwest.Īs the reader follows the parallel lives of Latour-solemn, solitary, reserved-and Vaillant-ugly, kind, loyal-the novel meanders through the varied landscapes of New Mexico and Arizona. At the heart of their relationship is a deep-seated friendship stretching back to childhood, but Cather’s novel is much more about the men’s sense of place, and their dedication to service and the work they are called to do. ![]() ![]() The priests share friendship and a calling to missionary work, as they also mourn their French homeland and childhoods. The novel follows their lives as they grow to love and respect the land and its people: the various indigenous groups with their many ways of life, the Mexican families who settled the land generations before, and the newly arrived Euro-American settlers. Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop (originally published in 1927) is the story of Fathers Jean Latour and Joseph Vaillant as they arrive in the New Mexican dioceses in 1851 as its new, young Bishop and Vicar respectively. ![]()
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