His journey is hard, dangerous, and long and his arrival leaves him poor and exhausted with much work ahead of him.

A new bishop (Jean Marie Latour) is named for this territory but must make his way from Sandusky, Ohio to New Mexico before the completion of the transcontinental railroad. The territory of New Mexico became a part of the United States and the diocesan boundaries were redrawn to reflect the new political reality. This 1927 classic tells the story of a Catholic missionary bishop shortly after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American War in 1848. In this spirit, I want to take the opportunity to offer a recommendation of one of my favorite books, Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather.

Vacations, longer evenings and a more relaxed schedule give us a chance to turn off the television, put down our phones and spend some time with a good book. Without this haunting setting the novel couldn’t have existed.The summer months often provide an opportunity for reading that is not possible during the rest of the year. The landscape with its vast spaces is a character in its own right. I found it wonderfully descriptive of the Father and his challenges, the people he worked with and the sparse New Mexico landscape. This novel is as humbly quiet, deep and good as Father Latour himself. As the nearly forty years of his career pass, his reputation and respect grow until he becomes an Archbishop. The Father is a gentle, humble and respectful man, quietly living his faith. And it’s very empty – bare red rock, immense deserts to be covered on muleback and small settlements barely worthy of being called towns. Even in the 1800's it's already an old land with hundreds of years of church history. New Mexico has recently been ceded to the Americans, but most of the inhabitants are Mexican or Native including the warlike Navajos and Apaches. He finds it ugly and depressing and in 1851 is happy to become the apostolic vicar in the new territory of New Mexico. A good priest and more than that – a good man - Father Jean Marie Latour leaves his life in Italy forever to take up priesthood in the New World in Ohio.

Death comes to the archbishop review