The way this book was written is unusual. It is episodic, almost sporadic, jumping from era to era in the history of the archbishop's life, speeding up and bypassing decades at a time without any warning and then slowing down to examine one particular moment in great detail. The main character, the titular archbishop, is a very formal person, remote even to the readers, yet somehow still very sympathetic. Strangely enough, the period of time in which he is the archbishop is never even discussed! He is a bishop for the majority of the book and then there is a break of 20 years or so. We come back and the former bishop is now a retired former archbishop nearing the end of his life. Anyway, I did love this book. Willa Cather is such a beautiful author. Her talent for capturing landscape and scenery is just about unmatched. I tend to go for plot and with a lot of authors, I get antsy reading prolonged descriptions of place, but Cather draws you in with spare yet beautiful prose, without using flowery phrases, until it seems that you aren't reading but seeing these places in person.