Jean-Luke's Reviews > Death Comes for the Archbishop

So when are we getting an edition of this book illustrated with the New Mexico paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe? I honestly can't think of a more perfect combination. Some of the places Cather describes are as fantastic as something dreamed up by Ursula le Guin, only in this case they are real, e.g. the Pueblo of Acoma. Built on top of a 367-foot mesa, it houses a 17th century church and was inaccessible by road until the 1950s. The book is set in the mid to late nineteenth century--the United States is rapidly expanding westward--and like Shadows on the Rock, the only other Cather book I've read, it has a feel-good, soothing gentleness to it. It isn't that it lacks brutality--there's plenty of murder and executions to go around--but isn't gritty or gratuitous. The plot is highly episodic--Jean Marie Lathour, the (Arch)bishop of the title, is present throughout--and in more than one way the book is reminiscent of The Bridge of San Luis Rey. It is no spoiler to say that death comes as the end, and only then does the writing become a little too introspective/scattered, resulting in the weakest of the nine episodes when this should arguably have been one of the strongest. Perhaps I simply lack the faith to swallow fanciful tales of miracles quite as easily as Father Latour does.

'I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.'