March: Fiction Pick
Howard Frank Mosher recently died, and this book is published posthumously. It is a collection of short stories, all set in “The Kingdom”, actually 3 counties bordering on Canada, in northern Vermont. This is an area known for its long cold winters, and rural farming population. The stories all concern members of the Kinneson family, original settlers, who all are flaming eccentrics. Reminiscent of Wendell Berry’s stories , dwelling on the virtues of an earlier time, these are stories of rural America, in all its glory. They will leave you in a good mood. – Judith
The final book by one of America’s most treasured writers.
Upon his passing in January 2017, Howard Frank Mosher was recognized as one of America’s most acclaimed writers. His fiction set in the world of Vermont’s fabled Northeast Kingdom chronicles the intertwining family histories of the natives, wanderers, outcasts, and others who settled in this ethereal place. In its obituary, The New York Times wrote, “Mr. Mosher’s fictional Kingdom County, Vt., became his New England version of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County.”
In Points North, completed just weeks before his death, Mosher presents a brilliant, lovingly-evoked collection of stories that center around the Kinneson family, ranging over decades of their history in the Kingdom. From a loquacious itinerant preacher who beguiles the reticent farmers and shopkeepers of a small New England town, to a proposed dam that threatens the river that Kinneson men have fished for generations, the scandalous secret of a romance and its violent consequences, and a young man’s seemingly fruitless search for love—Points North is a full-hearted, gently-comic, and beautifully-written last gift to the readers who treasure Howard Frank Mosher.
