Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop is one of the few American novels radically to appreciate and celebrate the Catholic culture of the American Southwest that long pre-dated the settling of Plymouth Massachusetts.

This is a relatively short novel built on the life of the first (French) Archbishop of New Mexico. The novel is constructed around multiple journeys: from the cultivation of the Old World to the beautiful yet primitive New World; from a region that was Indian and pagan, that becomes Spanish and Catholic, only to be forced into the United States; from the West of Kit Carson to a region of cities and towns; from being an outsider in a strange land to becoming one with the land; from a slightly sceptical view of saints and miracles to a keen sense of God’s Providence to the American world.

At all times the glowing beauty of the American Southwest and of heroic piety upholds the narrative and the reader. This is one of the great Catholic books ever written by one who did not, as far as we know, formally enter the Church in her life here on earth.