Set in the 1850s, this short novel is about the struggles and triumphs of a bishop, Jean Marie Latour, and his loyal friend and vicar, Father Joseph Vaillant. They have been sent to reawaken and spread the Roman Catholic faith in an area where it has grown weak: New Mexico, recently annexed by the United States. Desolate and remote, the territory is home to many diverse groups: Mexicans, including those on ranches established for hundreds of years; Indians, who have been there much longer and who are divided by language and customs into thirty nations; and newcomers—hunters, fur trappers, and those seeking gold. This book is as much their story as it is the story of the priests and the vast changes the land itself underwent in those years. Death Comes for the Archbishop was a departure for Willa Cather, who had already published eight novels before publishing this one in 1927. The novel doesn’t try to follow a single unified story the way many historical novels do; instead, its nine chapters are episodic, filled with stories, legends, histories, and descriptions of the Southwest, which Cather had been visiting for many years before she started writing it. Many of its main characters, including the bishop and his vicar, are thinly disguised versions of real-life historical figures, while other famous New Mexicans of the day, including the frontiersman Kit Carson and the “powerful old priest,” Antonio José Martínez, appear under their actual names. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Two French missionaries make their way to the harsh, unexplored, mountainous region of New Mexico in the hope of revivifying there the religion that had been brought by Spanish priests and then left to decay in the hands of an insubordinate and materialistic clergy.

Death Comes for the Archbishop is a 1927 novel by American author Willa Cather. It concerns the attempts of a Catholic bishop and a priest to establish a diocese in New Mexico Territory. The novel is based on the life of Jean-Baptiste Lamy (1814-1888), and partially chronicles the construction of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. The capture of the Southwest by the United States in the Mexican-American War is the catalyst for the plot. "The Padre of Isleta", Anton Docher is identified as the character of Padre de Baca. Among the entities mentioned in the novel are Los Penitentes, a flagellant lay confraternity in Southern Colorado and New Mexico that still operates today. The novel was reprinted in the Modern Library series in 1931. It was included in Life Magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924-1944. It was also included on Time's 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005 and Modern Library's list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century and was chosen by the Western Writers of America to be the 7th-best "Western Novel" of the 20th century. James Paul Old of Valparaiso University uses Death Comes for the Archbishop as a literary example of the notion that religious faith is able to develop and maintain strong social bonds in nascent democratic political orders. He argues that even though Cather's early novels, such as My Ántonia, typically represent religious characters as closed-minded, her personal religious realignment at the time allowed her to alter her perspective and develop more positive religious characters, in this case Catholic ones. And while some of her contemporary critics found her out of step with the experiences of common people, later critics, such as Old, praised her for a "search for a basis of order and cultural stability beyond the confines of contemporary secular culture." Additionally, scholars note that Latour's character is not strictly placed within the male-female binary, but instead, as Jennifer A. Smith argues, "oscillates between norms of femininity and masculinity." In developing a theory that Cather had questioned her own gender in the 1920s, Patrick W. Shaw suggests that "fundamental double entendres" and "elaborate image clusters" throughout the novel support a reading of sexual disregularity and ambiguity. (wikipedia.org)

Death Comes for the Archbishop is a 1927 novel by American author Willa Cather. It concerns the attempts of a Catholic bishop and a priest to establish a diocese in New Mexico Territory.The novel was reprinted in the Modern Library series in 1931. It was included in Life Magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924-1944.

Willa Cather published the novel "Death Comes for Archbishop" in 1927. It's not really a standalone tale but a stylized retelling of the life of two late 19th century figures, Jean Baptiste Lemy and Joseph Projectus Machebbeuf, who were Roman Catholic clergy in New Mexico in the 1920s. The narrative is told in omniscient third person and includes snooping in on stories about the pair and their recollecties. The novel begins with an Irish Bishop in the New World named bishop Ferrand suggesting Jean - Marie LatOUR as Bishop of the newly created New Mexico diocese. Bishop Latour and his viar Joseph Vaillant travel from Ohio to new Mexico and also recount their entire year - long journey and their journey in the New territory. The approaches to faith and life of Vaillante and Latour are compared. Vaillant is fearless and actively advocates faith, while Latour is more reticent and intellectual. The characters confront different hurdles, like navigating the established clergy in New Mexico, several of whom are depictes as egregious in their greed along with other vices. Cather sympathetically depicts the Pueblos, Hopi and Navajo indigenous peoples, and discusses the Long Walk of the Navajo. The novel concludes with the passing of Archbishop Latour after Vaillant is chosen the very first Bishop of Colorado in Santa Fe. Literaryly significant, "Death Comes for Archbishop" has been included in numerous best selling lists and has long been praised because of its depiction of religious faith as well as social bonds in a developing democratic political order.

Death Comes for the Archbishop is a 1927 novel by American author Willa Cather. It concerns the attempts of a Catholic bishop and a priest to establish a diocese in New Mexico Territory. The novel was reprinted in the Modern Library series in 1931.

Death Comes for the Archbishop is a 1927 novel by American writer Willa Cather. This concerns the efforts of a Catholic bishop and a priest to establish a diocese in the New Mexico Territory. This novel was reprinted in the Modern Library series in 1931.