Pete Cross narrates Willa Cather's atmospheric classic, first published in 1927, with quiet assurance. In 1851, Father Jean Marie Latour begins his priesthood by serving as the apostolic vicar of New Mexico. As the priest from the East navigates the desert Southwest--its stunning landscape, its intensely divided peoples, and its surprising caprices--Cross brings Cather's gorgeous descriptions and the priest's inner struggles to life. In more of a reading than a performance, Cross delivers the vastness of the desert, the seething racial conflicts, contentious religious differences, and the people's humanity. Cross doesn't use accents to identify American, Native American, or Hispanic speakers, but his intelligent narration celebrates Cather's emphasis on what's most important in a person's life--living fully and honestly. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

A truly remarkable book ... Soaked through and through with atmosphere ... From the riches of her imagination and sympathy Miss Cather has distilled a very rare piece of literature. It stands out, from the very resistance it opposes to classification.” —The New York Times

 "The most sensuous of writers, Willa Cather builds her imagined world as solidly as our five senses build the uiverse around us.” —Rebecca West

 “[Cather’s] descriptions of the Indian mesa towns on the rock are as beautiful, as unjudging, as lucid, as her descriptions of the Bishop’s cathedral. It is an art of ‘making,’ of clear depiction—of separate objects, whose whole effect works slowly and mysteriously in the reader, and cannot be summed up.... Cather’s composed acceptance of mystery is a major, and rare, artistic achievement.” —A. S. Byatt

Pete Cross narrates Willa Cather's atmospheric classic, first published in 1927, with quiet assurance. In 1851, Father Jean Marie Latour begins his priesthood by serving as the apostolic vicar of New Mexico. As the priest from the East navigates the desert Southwest--its stunning landscape, its intensely divided peoples, and its surprising caprices--Cross brings Cather's gorgeous descriptions and the priest's inner struggles to life. In more of a reading than a performance, Cross delivers the vastness of the desert, the seething racial conflicts, contentious religious differences, and the people's humanity. Cross doesn't use accents to identify American, Native American, or Hispanic speakers, but his intelligent narration celebrates Cather's emphasis on what's most important in a person's life--living fully and honestly. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine