Willa Cather : Later Novels : A Lost Lady / The Professor's House / Death Comes for the Archbishop / Shadows on the Rock / Lucy Gayheart / Sapphira and the Slave Girl by Willa Cather


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I read Death Comes for the Archbishop before a trip to Albuquerque because I wanted to read about the history of New Mexico. Also, this is a book recommended to me more than 45 years ago by the town's librarian who had been my second-grade teacher. The descriptions of the land meant nothing to me, in my early teens, because I had only known the midwest of Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. A recent hiking trip to Big Bend National Park opened my imagination to the image of Jean Marie Latour who

had lost his way, and was trying to get back to the trail, with only his compass and his sense of direction for guides. The difficulty was that the country in which he found himself was as featureless--or rather, that it was crowded with features, all exactly alike....He had been riding among them since early morning, and the look of the country had no more changed than if he had stood still.

As a teenager, I still preferred a novel with a strong narrative form that kept me turning pages at the end of every chapter; I was not yet prepared for the enjoyment of an episodic novel such as this.
I'm glad I gave it a second chance.

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