Death Comes for the Archbishop

Willa Cather

Jul 2018 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

'Quite simply a masterpiece ... I am completely bowled over by it; by the power of its writing, by the vividness of its scene painting and by the stories it tells' A. N. Wilson

'Where there is great love there are always miracles'

Two French priests have been sent to New Mexico to reawaken the faith. There, they must contend with unforgiving landscapes, danger, rebellion and loneliness. But through their many years together they are sustained by faith, friendship and the awe-inspiring majesty that surrounds them. A work of great simplicity and sublime beauty, Willa Cather's acclaimed novel asks, what is a life well lived?

Death Comes for the Archbishop is a masterpiece by the author of O Pioneers! and the great novelist of American frontier life.

'Its whole effect works slowly and mysteriously ... a major, and rare, artistic achievement' A. S. Byatt

About the author

Willa Cather was born in Virginia in 1873 and moved to Nebraska, with its wide open plains and immigrant farming communities, at the age of nine. This landscape would deeply affect her later writing. She attended university and became a journalist and teacher in Pittsburgh, and then a magazine editor in New York. Her first major novel, O Pioneers!, appeared in 1913 and was followed by two more in her prairie trilogy, The Song of the Lark and My Ántonia, as well as her masterpiece Death Comes for the Archbishop. She lived with the editor Edith Lewis for thirty-nine years until her death in 1947.