Based on the real-life experiences of two French missionaries in New Mexico, Death Comes for the Archbishop tells the story of the aged, withdrawn bishop Jean Marie Latour and his practical and hopeful vicar, Joseph Vaillant, who struggle together to bring Old World religion to the New World by building a cathedral in the desert Southwest. As always, Cather makes her landscape--the arid New Mexican plains--a palpable character in the story, and she...