Death's Deceiver: The Life of Joseph P. Machebeuf by Lynn Bridgers (review)

582book reviews good Catholics. Lyons fails to recognize that disagreement over nationality issues and clashes among bishops and aggrieved priests and lay men and women were endemic in the Church in the United States at the time. In fact, they were usually intertwined. Differences over ethnic issues rapidly escalated into battles over authority almost everywhere in an American church struggling to establish its own identity in a democratic republic and to set up administrative structures adequate to solve the problems as well as take advantage of the benefits which rapid growth, mostly based on European immigration, created. Lyons does perform a useful service in uncovering some documents and letters hitherto lost, especially those dealing with sexual misconduct charges against Rappe, which clarify some of the issues surrounding Rappe's resignation and his opponents' motivations. But in the final analysis Rappe was brought down not by apparently untrue charges of solicitation (Rome discounted them) or by "conspiracies" led by selfish Germans and Irish but by his own administrative ineptitude, a weakness which Rappe himself recognized throughout his life. If Lyons fails to place Rappe in the historical framework ofAmerican Catholicism (for example, he provides no context for the growth of parochial schools or the establishment of religious orders and charitable institutions), he also fails to place him in the historical context of northern Ohio. Rappe's "times" consist of a few pages of mostly one-sentence paragraphs listing unconnected events, usually only in Cleveland. For example, on the same page (p. 181) Lyons tells us that in 1870 there were about ten and one half miles of stone pavement in Cleveland, cleaned four or five times a year by manual labor; that Francis H. Glidden began mixing paints and varnishes; that the Little Sisters of the Poor opened an asylum on Erie Street; and that an iron fence with a Gothic gateway was built around Erie Street Cemetery at a cost of $8,296 and that almost all of the lots had been sold as early as I860. Bishop Rappe deserves better treatment by historians than this deeply flawed biography provides. Henry B. Leonard Kent State University (Emeritus) Death's Deceiver: The Life ofJoseph P. Machebeuf. By Lynn Bridgers. (Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press. 1997. Pp. viii, 268. $3995 clothbound ; $21.95 paperback.) A crippled, homely French missionary seems an unlikely hero for the American West. Yet, Father Machebeuf logged some 100,000 miles in New Mexico, Colorado,Arizona, and Utah in a heroic effort to bring Catholicism to the American Southwest. Covering an area larger than France, he traveled in a wagon which doubled as his home. The tailgate he lowered for use as an altar. After being appointed Colorado Territory's first priest, and later the first bishop, Machebeuf proved to be a prodigious builder. Like Rocky Mountain book reviews583 mining, ranching, and railroad tycoons, he borrowed money to the hilt and suffered through bankruptcies, risking everything to acquire more resources for the Diocese of Denver. He had the unshakable optimism that characterized the great pioneers. "To be a true American," he wrote home to his family in France, "one must have many debts, and in that regard I am the genuine article" (p. 57). When Machebeuf came to Denver in I860, his parish (all Colorado and Utah) had only two adobe mission churches. When he died in 1889, the Diocese of Denver boasted 102 churches, nine schools, a college, an orphanage, and ten hospitals. Machebeuf's story has been told before, in a factual straightforward biography by Father William J. Howlett. Readers of Willa Cather's wonderful novel, Death Comesfor theArchbishop, may remember that the Santa Fe Archbishop Lamy's right-hand man was Father Joseph Valliant, a fictional but accurate Machebeuf. Paul Horgan's classic, Lamy ofSanta Fe, also gives much attention to Machebeuf, Lamy's lifelong friend and closest associate. Yet, this well-written fresh look at Machebeuf is enjoyable and edifying reading with updated research and a review of the controversy about Machebeuf. Lynn Bridgers bases this book on her MA. thesis for the writing program at the University of California at Berkeley. She opens with a description of Machebeuf 's "heavenly smile that...