This book is brilliant! How Ms. Cather could so vividly describe scenes, people, and their thoughts is extraordinary. In this book she takes the life of one man and very intuitively describes his past, his present, and the past and present for those people around him and his interactions with him. Set in the American Southwest in the 1850s to nearly 1890, she describes the challenging, but patient life of a French-born priest amidst the Mexicans and Indians to understand their ways and to convert them. ( )

her masterpiece

Racist and boring. Hard pass. ( )

Another one I remember reading some years ago, without now recalling its details. ( )

A good priest and more than that – a good man - Father Jean Marie Latour leaves his life in Italy forever to take up priesthood in the New World in Ohio. He finds it ugly and depressing and in 1851 is happy to become the apostolic vicar in the new territory of New Mexico.

New Mexico has recently been ceded to the Americans, but most of the inhabitants are Mexican or Native including the warlike Navajos and Apaches. Even in the 1800's it's already an old land with hundreds of years of church history. And it’s very empty – bare red rock, immense deserts to be covered on muleback and small settlements barely worthy of being called towns.

The Father is a gentle, humble and respectful man, quietly living his faith. As the nearly forty years of his career pass, his reputation and respect grow until he becomes an Archbishop.

This novel is as humbly quiet, deep and good as Father Latour himself. I found it wonderfully descriptive of the Father and his challenges, the people he worked with and the sparse New Mexico landscape. The landscape with its vast spaces is a character in its own right. Without this haunting setting the novel couldn’t have existed.