Death Comes for the Archbishop

Willa Cather transports the reader into the savage and unforgiving Southwest terrain, enlightening our senses, enabling us to see the brown and desolate landscape in our minds eye. At times while reading Death Comes for the Archbishop, I felt like I was gazing at a painting. A must read for a person who seeks a glimpse of the stark Southwest, and a well written book.

One of my permanent, permanent favorites. Cather’s novel about a pair of French Catholic missionaries in 19th-century New Mexico is a lot of things: a portrait of a complex and life-giving friendship, a “loveship,” if I can borrow from Alice Munro.

It’s also an immersive historical treatment of Catholic proselytizing in the Southwest and a lyric poem about the beauty of that land. It’s smart about the rigors and consolations and the inevitable condescension of missionary work. It’s smart about everything. A perfect book.

I read Death Comes for the Archbishop when I was fifteen. It was my first encounter with literary prose that was not assigned by a teacher, and it changed my life for the better by giving me a better understanding of myself and the human drama. I thought at the time: This is the best book I ever read. I re-read the novel in 2017 and thought: This is the best book I ever read. There’s no sex in it, but it’s a love story between two men. Cather’s novel has guided my work as a writer for more than… show more.

Cather’s love of the land here is apparent here as missionary Father Jean arrives from France in the 1800s following the annexation of New Mexico to bring his faith to the reluctant indigenous people, Spanish settlers, and skeptical Mexican priests set in their own hybrid ways. I had to read this book in high school and as an adult in 2021 I have a wholly different take on its whole colonialism thing. But, by the end, even after he retires Father Jean chooses to stay in New Mexico than go back to France (!!) which truthfully speaks to how New… show more.

Every book by Willa Cather is worth a read for her beautiful evocation of places, times, and people. Death Comes for the Archbishop is a fictionalized biography of two Roman Catholic priests dispatched to New Mexico in the 1850s to serve the newly established diocese in this newly annexed region of the United States. The heart of the story is the way in which each of the men evolve and adapt to a world utterly unlike the European urban centers they have left behind. In Cather’s hands, the landscape quickly becomes a third principal character. I was struck by how… show more.