Poulsbo Book Group

Willa Cather's best known novel, "Death comes for the archbishop", is an epic--almost mythic--story of a single human life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indigenous in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows—gently. The beauty of the setting, the story of a lifelong friendship, and the struggles of faith all combine through Cather’s masterful writing to create a classic work of fiction that is deserving of its reputation.