Howard Frank Mosher (1942–2017)

As I finished the last story in this marvelous collection, it was with a sad and heavy heart. Another amazing author we will not hear from again, a man who created the mythic landscape of Kingdom County in Vermont. The Kinnesons, who have inhabited this place for generations, on both sides of the poverty line, both sides of the law. They are fascinating characters whom I have come to cherish.

The stories in this collection go back and forth in time, in them we are able to revisit some of the show more characters I have come to love. There is humor, betrayal, much fishing, and descriptions of nature. They go from heartbreaking to humorous and somewhere in between. The people and place come alive in all his books and of course in these stories as well. They truly earn the five stars I have given them.

Luckily for me, I started this series relatively late so I still have his early books to go back and read. They are in my mind comparable to Hardy's Wessex tales, the late Kent Haruf and his Colorado towns and Wendel Barry's terrific novels. They are novels, stories to cherish, as the people and places in them come alive and capture the reader, with some wonderful, smart prose and depth of characters. Another author I will surely miss.

ARC from Netgalley. show less

From Amazon:

Howard Frank Mosher is one of America's most acclaimed writers. His fiction, set in the world of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, chronicles the intertwining family histories of the natives, wanderers, outcasts, and fugitives--white, Native American, escaped slaves fleeing north, French Canadians, and others--who settled in this remote and beautiful place.

God's Kingdom explores the Kinneson family through the coming of age of the heir, Jim, and its rich and complicated history. show more Earnest and innocent, a bright high school student, Jim grows curious about the unspoken "trouble in the family" that haunts his father, a small-town newspaper editor, and his grandfather, a raconteur who keeps the Kinnesons' secrets to himself. Layer by layer, tale by tale, sorting out fact from deliberately obscured legend, Jim explores the Kinnesons' long relationship with others in the Kingdom, culminating in a discovery that forever changes his life and place in that world. Beginning with a magical Thanksgiving Day hunting trip in the autumn mountains, and ending with Jim on the brink of leaving home to find life-and perhaps love-on the other side of the ridge, God's Kingdom unfolds with the patient delight of a master storyteller.

Why I wanted to read it: For April Book Club discussion.

Rich, funny, poignant, just plain interesting, this is the story of Jim Kinneson’s high school years, 1952 – 1956. We’re treated to the family lore of his Scots ancestor and his Abenaki wife Molly Molasses, his abolitionist ancestor, the founder of the Academy school Dr. Pliny Templeton and the mystery of his early life, the hysterically funny and tragic story of Mike the Moose, and Jim’s first love. Each story illuminates part of the family history or part of what makes people in God’s Kingdom tick.

The family are quirky, honest, upright, and steeped in family lore and tradition. They are practical, whimsical, and full of life. The stories are full of fascinating observations of the geographical details of the mountains, streams, lakes, and dams. They are also a paean to how people with a deep love of their land live off it – with knowledge and respect.

This book is beautifully and sparingly written. Somehow Mosher can make ‘spare’ seem lush. It is also vivid and the characters pop vividly, sometimes by their physical descriptions, sometimes by their behavior and stories. All in all a book I unsparingly recommend. show less

Another very good book of comical, personal essays from Howard Frank Mosher. A popular regional writer out of Vermont, Mosher has written a dozen books of fiction, but I've not read any of those, just this one, THE GREAT NORTHERN EXPRESS, and his only other non-fiction book, NORTH COUNTRY, from over twenty years ago, when he'd just turned fifty. This time, at 65, Mosher had just completed a course of radiation treatments for prostate cancer, but decided to do a hundred-day road trip around show more the U.S. to promote his latest novel. So we follow him on this north-south, coast-to-coast journey, as he natters away at his imagined and deceased friends and favorite uncle, and remembers his childhood and young married years, teaching high school English and struggling to find his voice as a writer. And lots of chat and digressions about favorite books and writers - and all the indie bookstores he visits too, noting -

"Aren't independent booksellers the last public guardians of our human rights and, along with librarians and teachers, the keepers of our cultural and literary traditions?"

Yes. But this book is just a whole lot of fun to read. And Mosher's trip makes him slow down and -

"Enjoy every minute in this lovely rolling land of yellow-headed blackbirds and giant swallowtails."

Indeed. Especially if you are battling an aggressive form of cancer. And Mosher's cancer did apparently go into remission. Sadly, however, he succumbed to another cancer just three years ago. RIP, Howard. And thanks for your books and stories.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

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 show more 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. show less