Death Comes for the Archbishop

Death Comes for the Archbishop was a departure for Willa Cather, who had already published eight novels before publishing this one in 1927. The novel doesn’t try to follow a single unified story the way many historical novels do; instead, its nine chapters are episodic, filled with stories, legends, histories, and descriptions of the Southwest, which Cather had been visiting for many years before she started writing it.

Many of its main characters, including the bishop and his vicar, are thinly disguised versions of real-life historical figures, while other famous New Mexicans of the day, including the frontiersman Kit Carson and the “powerful old priest,” Antonio José Martínez, appear under their actual names.

This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.