9 Death Comes for the Archbishop

Death Comes for Archbishop sprang from Willa Cather's love for land and cultures of American Southwest. Published in 1927 to both praise and perplexity, it has since claimed for itself a major place in twentieth-century literature. When Cather first visited American Southwest in 1912, she found a new world to imagine and soon came to feel that the story of Catholic Church in [the Southwest] was most interesting of all its stories. The narrative follows Bishop Jean Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant, friends since their childhood in France, as they organize new Roman Catholic diocese of Santa Fe subsequent to Mexican War. While seeking to revive church and build a cathedral in desert, clerics, like their…