I love to read. In high school, we were assigned books to read, and then write about, and I did it. Some of them captured me. But some of them didn’t do anything for me at all. We read a Willa Cather book, but I can’t remember which one. It didn’t “get” me then. However, as a grown woman, I recently read Death Comes For the Archbishop, and this time, Willa Cather got me.

I’d chosen the book from my daughter’s collection when we were visiting them for a holiday. I started it one night for bedtime reading. The first couple of chapters were a bit slow, but then the next night, I read until I dropped the book and fell asleep. I didn’t have time to finish it before our departure, so I borrowed it and finished it as we drove south through the Great Basin into the Mohave Desert. Perhaps some books need to be read in their environment.