It took a journalist to write one of New Mexico's most famed pieces of fictional literature. And, not surprisingly, Willa Cather focused on Santa Fe history.

Cather was born in 1873 in Virginia and moved to Nebraska. She spent much of her youth and early career as a newspaper editor and writer, penning articles for numerous publications. She also wrote dozens of shorts stories before publishing her first novel in 1912.

Cather's next few books, including the classics O Pioneers! and My Ántonia, turned her into one of America's most noted authors. One of her books, in fact, may even have inspired sections of F. Scott Fitzgerald's epochal The Great Gatsby.

Perhaps her most respected novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop, grew out of Cather's fascination with New Mexico and the Southwest. Since childhood, Cather had devoured magazine articles on the Southwest, with its unique landscape and characters. In 1925, by then a successful writer, Cather visited New Mexico to research "her priests" and their homes.

Cather threw herself wholeheartedly into her reading on real-life Catholic luminaries Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Antonio José Martinez and Joseph Machebeuf. Her research took her around the state as she visited Acoma, Taos, Alcalde, Abiquiú and the village of Lamy. In Santa Fe, she stayed at La Fonda, just feet from the cathedral where the real Lamy once toiled.

Even though she was still in the process of editing her last book, Cather returned to New Mexico a year later. This time she stayed with trendsetting New Mexican writer Mary Austin. Cather used Austin's New Mexico cabin as a writer's retreat before returning to the East Coast to finish the book in a surprisingly short period of time.

While writing, Cather took recorded history as mere suggestion, a dangerous decision in light of her use of real names. While she created fictitious pseudonyms for Lamy and Machebeuf, Martinez was represented in the novel under his actual name, as was the pulp hero Kit Carson. Cather also based much of the novel on inaccurate reports tied to these men.

Even without fictionalization, Jean-Baptiste Lamy's life story seemed the stuff of legend. A French-born and trained priest, Lamy traveled to the United States while still in his youth. A decade after his arrival, the Vatican, hoping to take advantage of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, assigned Lamy to the newly created provisional diocese of New Mexico.

Lamy found numerous obstacles in Santa Fe. The clergy already installed in New Mexico refused to recognize the reorganization of the diocese or Lamy's leadership. Several priests butted heads with Lamy repeatedly over issues such as clerical lifestyles and the institution of tithes. Lamy also took on a larger cross-section of the New Mexican populace as he attempted to disband the Penitentes. Dying in 1888, Lamy never actually witnessed the partial completion of, perhaps, his greatest accomplishment — the cathedral that still stands in the center of Santa Fe.

The conflict and racial overtones in Lamy's history perfectly fueled Cather's imagination. Through Lamy, Cather could explore the processes of cultural transformation, empire and colonization as New Mexico changed from a Mexican province to an American territory.

In the summer of 1927, the novel appeared in serial form. Knopf followed up that fall, releasing Death Comes for the Archbishop as a book. It met not only with popular interest, but also with critical acclaim. The American Academy of Arts and Letters presented Cather with the prestigious Howell's Medal for the best American novel. More distinctions soon followed as Cather received honorary degrees from Yale, Columbia, the University of California at Berkeley and Princeton.

Before her death in 1947, Cather published two more novels and a compilation of short stories. Her final book, The Old Beauty and the Others was published just after her death.

Since its publication, Death Comes for the Archbishop has remained on the short list of classic American literature. Time magazine placed the book on its list of the 100 best English-language novels. The Modern Library ranks the book 61st on their catalog of 100 novels.

Jason Strykowski is a doctoral student in history at The University of New Mexico.