Death Comes (early) for the Archbishop

I am have jumped straight out of order here, in a way.

The Amazing Mandy recommended that I save Death Comes for the Archbishop for my last book to savor in December. And I had every intention of saving that book......

But the other night, with my house full of extra people, I was hunting for some comforting fiction on any shelf in any room not inhabited by guests....and all I could find was Death Comes for the Archbishop.

I had a warm bath filling in my tub, and it was the only book on my list upon which I could lay my hands at the time, except for a couple of more challenging items which I was not up for.

So I took it, guiltily, from the shelf and read 75 pages in the bath. Tonight I finished it.

And I'm now a Willa Cather fan. She is a beautiful writer. I read My Antonia several months ago, and found it to be sort of a comforting book. I guess I would say the same about this one.

Cather is not any kind of genius with novel structure, and her books seem to wander aimlessly. But this makes them perfect books for an evening in a hot bath. The thing she does really well is write a sentence and paint a picture with words. She describes New Mexico and the Western Desert in such perfect detail. I also found a cool site which shows some of the places described in her book.

This book tells a story of a Catholic bishop in the American southwest in the 1850's. He assumes his post and attends to his duties and is continually faced with corruption among the clergy, which he dispaches with a little too much ease. But it's an easy read, and a beautiful book to envision.