What struck me from the very first page of Death Comes for the Archbishop was that here speaks an authoritative voice, a writer in complete command of her material and her prose; and so also throughout these linked stories of a time and a place and of common characters, Willa Cather's liking for her protagonists comes through very strongly. She admires her priests and is fond of them.
I loved her occasional descriptive notes on the men such as this on Father Vaillant: "he added a glow to whatever kind of human society he was dropped down into", and this on Father Latour's hands: "[they] had a curious authority ... they seemed always to be investigating and making firm decisions". The men are straight and true, "fearless and fine", and I must admit that I took to them and I shed a tear at the end.
The other main component of this episodic narrative is the land itself, the great expanse of New Mexico where "the earth was the floor of the sky" and (on the Mesa plain) "the country was still waiting to be made into a landscape." In her comment on my introductory post for this book, Mary said that reading it was like reading your way into a Georgia O'Keeffe painting, and I think she was spot on there, as the place is so vividly described, defined by its colours, shaped by forces of nature which are ever-present.
As a whole, the book has a balance and a steadiness to it that speak of that authorial control I mentioned earlier. It was a great pleasure for me to discover Willa Cather through this most touching piece of writing, one in which things vast and mighty are telescopically defined and made intimate. What did you think of it?
