Lynne King's Reviews > Death Comes for the Archbishop

Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up to him for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again.

These are the thoughts of a man who is deciding upon whether to retire to live in the country of his birth, France, or remain in New Mexico.

This is the most perfect and exquisite book that I have ever read. I actually don’t know however why I purchased it in the first place. The title was enough to discourage me and the blurb that mentioned two French priests going to New Mexico in 1851 to reawaken its slumbering Catholicism was not that exciting. Well when I finished page 1, I was well and truly hooked and became more captivated as I finished each page.

The writing style was all that I could wish for. The novel, actually more of a narration, is multi-faceted with its descriptions of the mountains and deserts, especially with the different colours in the landscape, situations with the local population, whether they be Indian, Mexican or American, and religious and spiritual aspects but it all nevertheless coalesced into one. The interesting fact is that most of the Indian practices were unknown to people outside the tribes.

The two priests, Father [Jean Marie] Latour, consecrated Vicar Apostolic of New Mexico and Bishop of Agathonica in partibus and Father [Joseph] Vaillant had known each other for many years in France and in the States. But what a difference in their personalities. Father Latour was an academic and looked one with a refined facial expression and elegant behaviour; and also a book lover. Whereas Father Vaillant, who spent a great deal of time, in a huge parish, visiting everyone on horseback to try and convert them, and though eventually highly liked, was extremely ugly with a wart on the end of his nose, short and bow-legged. He was also of a sickly disposition and several times in the book it looked as if “his number was up” but survived. He was known as “trompe-la-mort” – literally death cheater. This in fact happened several times when he was travelling in New Mexico and the only way he could be reached, normally in isolated places, was of course by horseback.

Over nearly forty years, the two friends leave converts and enemies, crosses and occasionally ecstasy in their wake.

The case with ecstasy was wonderfully portrayed in that of a Mexican slave to an American family, who kept a very close eye on her as they were concerned she would try and escape back to her family. Because of this she was not allowed to go to church. Father Latour then finds this old woman outside the door to his church in the middle of the night. He gently leads her into the church and the tears of joy and the look of ecstasy of her face of being in a church for the first time in nineteen years quite overwhelms him.

Father Latour, who spent most of his life in Santa Fe, was eventually made an archbishop, whilst Father Vaillant, latterly an archbishop, spent most of his time in the saddle firstly in Albuquerque and latterly in Colorado. Certainly extremes between the two regions with the earlier region greatly preferred.

In that period of the 19th century with the two priests, especially Father Vaillant, spending most of their time on horseback to visit their “parishioners”, it was not until the arrival of stage coaches (the first regular stage service for New Mexico was not inaugurated until 1850. In July of that year, a coach left Independence, Mo., for Santa Fe) but I guess they were insufficient for the two priests’ needs and requirements, as well as the train, of which the official arrival celebration was held 22 April 1880, were indeed two greatly welcome changes in their already enriched lives.

The tales that the local priests tell Father Latour and Father Vaillant are fascinating to say the least, especially that of Friar Baltazar at some time in the very early years of seventeen hundred, nearly after the great Indian uprising, in which all the missionaries and all the Spaniards in northern New Mexico were either driven out or murdered, after the country had been reconquered and new missionaries had come to take the place of the martyrs, a certain Friar Baltazar Montoya was priest at Arcoma.

He was ambitious and exacting and ruled the puebla of Acoma. The Indians there had to more or less put up with him until one fine day he accidentally killed an Indian boy working in his house. And what a delicious and yet incredible ending to that spectacular tale!

I could go on ad infinitum about this book and have already started a second reading. So I had better close here.