James Baquet

    Of the many places I’ve lived outside of my hometown, the one I loved the best was also the place where I had the briefest stay. For just four months I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but for years before that I had been collecting and reading books about the place.

    Many first-rate writers produced books on the Southwest. Englishman D. H. Lawrence lived there for a spell. President-to-be Theodore Roosevelt visited and wrote about it. Many others contributed to the regional literature.

    But the author who stands head-and-shoulders above the rest is Willa Cather. Although better known for “O, Pioneers” and “My Antonia,” it is her incisive near-biography “Death Comes for the Archbishop” that became her only book on the list of “100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century,” coming in at No. 61.

    “Near-biography,” you’re thinking? “What’s that?” The Romanesque-styled Cathedral of Saint Francis in Santa Fe was built by a French archbishop named Jean-Baptiste Lamy and his co-missionary and assistant Father Joseph Projectus Machebeuf. But in the book, they are named Jean Marie Latour and Joseph Vaillant.

    The names are significant. Bishop Latour is academic, aloof, reserved — like one in an “ivory tower,” and “la tour” is French for “the tower.” Father Vaillant, on the other hand, is outgoing — literally, as he takes to the trail by mule back to visit far-flung settlements, and “vaillant” means “valiant” or “brave.” The latter is nicknamed “Trompe-la-morte” for his “cheating-of-death,” whether by accident or illness.

    Woven into the story of these two indefatigable missionaries is a trove of legends and lore of the Southwest. There’s the story of the sybaritic priest at Acoma Pueblo, who in a fit of anger killed an Indian boy and was thrown off a cliff in retribution; and of the night the Archbishop was forced by a storm to stay in a cave that his guide said was used for non-Christian Indian rituals.

    And that is a main theme of the book: the planting of a European religion in the soil of the New World, and the difficulties it engenders. By the time “Death comes,” the archbishop had succeeded.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. detached, reserved, indifferent

    2. revenge

    3. sharp, keen, clear

    4. knowledge of a particular subject

    5. produces, causes

    6. unable to become tired

    7. symbol of aloofness

    8. given to luxury

    9. located a great distance apart

    10. collection of something