American Westerns discussion

Thw winner of the Spring American Westerns Group read poll is Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather.

Chosen by the Western Writers of America to be the 7th-best "Western Novel" of the 20th century.

I finished reading .. I was rather bored with it. Maybe it's her writing style that I didn't enjoy.

.. explain to me .. what am I missing?

Those early Western writers like Cather, Wister, Zane Grey, and B. M. Bower can be tough reads due to the antiquated writing style of the early 20th century, plus the genre hadn't really been well defined until Hollywood and the Pulps added gunfights, Indian battles, and range wars. I can read them okay if I'm in the mood for slow pacing and lots of descriptive prose.

I love Death Comes for the Archbishop! Cather perfectly captured the wide, mythical expanse of the American West and its timeless rhythms. I know of no other writer who has done this as well as Willa Cather. She made the landscape not only a major theme, but a character. In the beginning Latours' grueling journeys go from outpost to outpost of the untamed West, and by the time the Archbishop dies the frontier experience is largely a thing of the past as well.

Cather's story is fictional, but it is based on real persons, the life of Bishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy of Santa Fe and many of the other characters are historical as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Ba...