Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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This is the stories of two priests who head to New Mexico to take over a vicarage and oversee the diocese in the newly annexed Southwest territories.

I should have taken a crash course in Catholicism before reading it; that would have cleared up some of the fuzzies for me. I kept forgetting the hierarchy, googling things like what a "breviary" is, etc. I also kept getting confused on who Valliant was because sometimes he was referred to by his last name and other times as "Father Joseph." There also wasn't a real flow. The text was divided into books with chapters inside those books. And the books were more like individual essays than a coherent storytelling.

But despite my own occasional confusion, I liked the book. I liked the dichotomy of personality between Latour and Valliant. They definitely complemented each other in their team work. And I loved the descriptions. Having lived and traveled in the Southwest, there were places I recognized by description (love when that happens in my reading).

It also checks off a reading goal to read one Cather book each year we live in Nebraska (or until I run out of books and stories).

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