Death Comes

Following On the Rocks Sue Hallgarth's first Willa Cather and Edith Lewis mystery Death Comes gives us another glimpse into the life and work of the Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Willa Cather and her talented life partner. The year is 1926. Willa and Edith return to Mabel Dodge Luhan's pink adobe in Taos New Mexico. Willa is writing Death Comes for the Archbishop. Edith is sketching Taos pueblo and hoping for a visit to the nearby D.H. Lawrence ranch. The previous summer they had stumbled on a woman's body. Now the headless bodies of two women add to the mystery. Sue Hallgarth presents an intimate portrait of Cather Lewis the spectacular New Mexico landscape and the famous artists and writers Mabel Dodge Luhan gathered in Taos. "They're back! If you loved On the Rocks you'll be thrilled to have this new adventure of Willa and Edith. This time they're in New Mexico tracking down the unsolved murders of too many women.Sue Hallgarth has done it again: the combination of deep knowledge of the geographic terrain its history Cather's literary preoccupations and Hallgarth's feminist sensibility have brought us another suspenseful terrific read." - Joan W. Scott author of Gender and the Politics of History and The Fantasy of Feminist History "My new favorite book is Death Comes! It made distant memories real and simpatico. What a delight to see them. And the beautiful Taos you let me walk through. I especially want to thank you for including Spud. He was always there so it's nice to have him recognized. I only knew him as an old man who always stopped to listen to a child. You showed me a young man who would become the one I knew and loved." - Claudia Smith Miller great-granddaughter of Mabel Dodge Luhan "Death Comes is a clever play on the novel that Willa Cather worked on in Taos New Mexico in the summers of 1925 and 1926 Death Comes for the Archbishop. Hallgarth has done serious historical and cultural research cleverly highlighting Willa Cather's virtues as a strong-willed sleuth... This is a very good read: as a story of 1920s Taos - including race and class relations as a portrait of the Mabel Dodge Luhan circle and last but not least as a murder mystery." - Lois Rudnick author of Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman New Worlds "Willa Cather is traveling in northern New Mexico while polishing her manuscript Death Comes for the Archbishop when she and her companion Edith Lewis are caught up in the mystery surrounding the deaths of three women near D.H. Lawrence's ranch. An intriguing story for those of us who always wished we had been there when Mabel Dodge Luhan held court in Taos for luminaries of art and literature." - Judith Ryan Hendricks author of Isabel's Daughter and The Laws of Harmony "The second book in Hallgarth's Willa Cather and Edith Lewis mystery series captures the vivid and compelling landscape of the Taos NM territorial west. A historical mystery with real people - think Mabel Dodge and Tony Luhan Long John Dunn Arthur Manby - and everyday life in the settling west. Compelling and richly imagined by a masterful storyteller. I didn't want it to end." - Betty Palmer Events Coordinator op.cit books Taos NM "Our favorite literary sleuths are back! And this time Willa Cather and Edith Lewis are summering in Taos New Mexico. Guests of Mabel Dodge Luhan the amiable pair are planning for nothing more taxing than a month's worth of writing and painting. Then an unsettling excursion to the D. H. Lawrence Ranch changes everything. Entertaining and edifying Death Comes is a compelling mystery set in New Mexico that place Cather described as a &lsquolandscape one longed for when one was away.' " - Sharon Oard Warner co-director D.H. Lawrence Ranch and author of Sophie's House of Cards