Death Comes for the Archbishop

'The old man smiled. "I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived."' A quietly stunning meditation on endurance, cultural encounters and spiritual legacy in the American Southwest, Death Comes for the Archbishop remains one of Willa Carter's greatest works. First published in 1927, Carther's luminous novel follows the lives of two French Catholic missionaries – Father Jean Marie Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant – as they journey to New Mexico Territory to establish a diocese in the mid-nineteenth century. Through a series of episodic vignettes, Cather paints a vast and vibrant landscape of deserts and mesas while exploring themes of faith, identity and the shaping of spiritual and physical frontiers. The result is a life-affirming tale of harmony between people, cultures and the natural world. Now translated into twenty-four languages, Death Comes for the Archbishop remains one of Cather's most celebrated works. Willa Cather (1873 – 1947) was an American novelist and short story writer. She worked as a magazine editor and English teacher before turning her hand to writing, eventually resulting in a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her novel, One of Ours. Often writing from a romantic nationalist perspective, her work explores themes such exile and nostalgia.