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Title: A Premier Landscape Novel
Review: Cather's historical novel is as serious and as peaceful as an amber-into-rust-into-rose sunset. The landscape itself has the richest characterization. She has crafted her prose in such a way as to give the land its own vitality and presence. If you like landscape art; if you stop at Scenic Overlooks on the highway; if you ever like to walk in the woods, the hills--just because--read this novel.Archbishop Latour, a Frenchman, has taken on the missionary work of creating a diocese in New Mexico Territory in the 1850's. Throughout his life's ministry, he encounters rogues, blackguards, ragmuffins, scalliwags, and ruthless soldiers, and then some simple saints, some lasting friends, and finally, death. When death finally does come, it brings his own peace, the restitution of justice.Cather writes lugubriously, moving from one anecdotal story to the next. But it is all against the backdrop of the land; when she is finished, the tapestry of the whole appears.Nice.
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