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| Death Comes for the Archbishop (Virago Modern Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Willa Cather
Creator: A. S. Byatt
Publisher: Virago UK
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $8.11
You Save: $5.84 (42%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $8.10
Avg. Customer Rating:  (2 reviews)
Sales Rank: 26061
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 1844083721
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781844083725
ASIN: 1844083721
Publication Date: September 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In 1851 Bishop Latour and his friend Father Valliant are despatched to New Mexico to reawaken its slumbering Catholicism. Moving along the endless prairies, Latour spreads his faith the only way he knows—gently, although he must contend with the unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Over nearly 40 years, they leave converts and enemies, crosses, and occasionally ecstasy in their wake. But it takes a death for them to make their mark on the landscape forever.
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| Customer Reviews:
Tale of the Old Southwest and the Missionaries November 19, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
To be honest, the title was not one that I would have picked up on my own, and the book was recommended to me several times before I decided to read it. (You can't tell a book by it's Title) Worthy of all of it's critical acclaim, I have read this novel over several times, not only for it's splendid story line, but for the sheer brilliance of it, each time marveling at it's beauty and style. Though it deals with religion, it does it tastefully, openly, and allows the reader to see the underside of the human element that powers it.
Though all men may be "created equal", their characters are not, and this story is powerful in that regard as it exposes men of the cloth that are there simply as users of others, as opposed to the devoted, the sincere who's life work has been striven to the good.
The novel is timeless. The story unfolds in France and Italy, is about two boyhood friends who study for the priesthood together and subsequently end up doing their life's work together in the wild, open country of the New Mexico and Arizona frontiers. This work spans their entire lives, and the adventures, trials and hardships are many. The artistry that Willa Cather employs as she takes her reader through the magnificent, lonely expanses of sage and cactus, to the Mexican people in remote areas; the lawless exiles who hope to disappear into it's wilderness, is all accomplished as though a painter is at work beside her, shaping her words into visuals, makes this work one of her best, in my view.
An American Classic November 5, 2007
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Cather, who is famous for the lyrical quality of her sensitive writing, does not disappoint in this spectacular novel. She creates a rich and sensitive tapestry of human experience, spinning a yarn of struggle, revelation, love, cruelty, adaptation, and ultimate triumph. She never yields to the temptations of fatuous romanticism or trite platitudes. This book is an experience that transports the reader into another time in another place, but then provides the most insightful among us with the material needed to extrapolate from this experience, and apply it to other places in other times. This is a uniquely American masterpiece that will resonate with those who may have grown out of spy thrillers and whodunits.
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