Willa Cather, "Death Comes For The Archbishop"

[stapsreads]

A book with a beautiful sense of place. Not a novel, Cather said, a narrative, and certainly it seems to meander along at its own pace, with no plot to speak of, but not troubled by that. It's more a fictionalisation of history. The meticulous research is evident, and manifests itself not so much as a history lesson as a work of art. My mental picture of New Mexico as it was is now considerably more detailed.

I did find myself getting twitchy at the missionary-heroes, because this is a part of post-colonial guilt that gets to me more than most, but as missionaries go Bishop Latour and Fr Vaillant are inoffensive, Latour particularly so. (His thoughts on the two great evils vanquished in his lifetime, for example...) Cather succeeds in making good people interesting, and that's not an easy task.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/9968361