The Bright Edges of the World: Willa Cather and Her Archbishop

ISBN: 0826369251

Author: Peck, Garrett

Condition: New

Author and historian Garrett Peck traces Willa Cathers adventures in the Southwest and how they influenced her best book.Six months before she died, Willa Cather called her 1927 novel Death Comes for the Archbishop her best book. The Atlantic magazine concurred, including Archbishop on its Great American Novels list in 2024. A perennial favorite for people who love New Mexico, the novel tells an unusual story of two French priests and best friends serving on the American frontier before the arrival of the railroad. This Western work of fiction is loosely based on two historical figures, Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Bishop Joseph Machebeuf.In The Bright Edges of the World, Garrett Peck explores how Cathers travels to the Southwest inspired her writing. She visited the Southwest six times between 1912 and 1926, and from these journeys came three novels, the last of which was Death Comes for the Archbishop. Through Cathers letters, postcards, articles, and interviews, Peck traces how integral travel was to Cathers imagination while highlighting the vital contribution that Cathers longtime partner, Edith Lewis, made to the story. The Bright Edges of the World is richly illustrated to highlight Cather and Lewiss extensive Southwestern adventures.Though Archbishop is a work of fiction, Peck explores how Cather wove some of the most legendary people in New Mexican history into her novel, such as Archbishop Lamy, Kit Carson, and Padre Antonio José Martínez, while subtly hinting toward the complexity of Pueblo Indian and Navajo (Diné) faith. Archbishop is a multicultural novel that reflects the diversity of New Mexicos people.Death Comes for the Archbishop remains a timeless book of friendship on the American frontier and an inspiration for people who, as Cather wrote, have gone a-journeying in New Mexico on the trail of the Archbishop.