Howard Frank Mosher (1942–2017)

A bit of a slow starter, but a good immersive story of life in 1952 in a tiny rural Vermont village with a long and slightly odd history that continues to influence events down the centuries. As if "the Kingdom's" own long-held mythologies and secrets were not enough to keep the common pot simmering, not one, but three strangers come to town, adding unfamiliar seasonings and more than a dash of spice. A particularly brutal murder, a bigoted sheriff, a self-assured Black clergyman and a variety of upstanding but unpleasant citizens raise the temperature until the stew is boiling over in a big way. Thirteen-year-old James Kinneson watches it all, and interprets what he sees with help from the dissimilar but complementary perspectives of his mother, his father and his adult brother Atty. Charlie Kinneson. Father and elder son do not see eye-to-eye, and have established a method of communicating with each other only through James, even while face to face. One can make comparisons to Faulkner (miscegenation, ancient grudges, the past is never dead!), Wendell Berry (rural life is better for people but human nature is the same everywhere), Harper Lee (a black man accused of molesting--then murdering--a white girl) and even Norman Maclean (fly-fishing as religion), but Mosher's story-telling style is not convoluted, nostalgic or particularly philosophical. It's just downright compelling. Initially my enjoyment of this novel was hampered by its physical form---it's long, and the type in my copy is not as crisp as it ought to be, and is cramped onto large pages with very little white space. I found I couldn't--my eyes couldn't--stick with it for long at a stretch. But I persisted, and at some point realized I didn't care anymore--I simply had to keep reading.… (mer)