Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Father Jean Marie Latour arrives in New Mexico in 1851 to serve as the Apostolic Vicar. What he discovers is a large expanse of red hills and winding arroyos that is American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the nearly forty years that follow, Latour spreads his religion in the best manner he knows how: softly, despite an inhospitable landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Cather creates an evocative vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself appears to be suspended as a result of these happenings.

Death Comes for the Archbishop follows Bishop Jean Latour and his vicar Father Joseph Vaillant as they organize the new Roman Catholic diocese of New Mexico. Latour is aristocratic, intelligent, and introverted; he is valiant, practical, outgoing, and sanguine. Friends since infancy in France, the cleric's triumph over corrupt Spanish priests, natural obstacles, and the Hopi and Navajo's apathy to establish their church and build a cathedral in the desert. The novel, essentially a character study, delves into Latour's inner conflicts as well as his relationship with the land, which becomes an imposing character in its own right thanks to the author's powerful description.

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