BOOK NOTES by Dr. Joan Ruddiman
I discovered Mitford several years ago and was smitten. The appeal has only grown in the ensuing stressful years as Mitford offers a world we long for and certainly need.
Since the mid-1990s, the fan base for Jan Karon’s "Mitford" series has been increasing to the point that mainstream publishers and best-books lists have had to take note. With more than 2 million of the "Mitford Years" series in print, these books have crossed over from the Christian bookseller’s lists to top the mainstream fiction lists.
For the legions who have given up network television (to say nothing of cable), and long ago wrote off going to the movies, Karon captures a world that still exists outside the meanness and vulgarity of media America. Mitford is Anytown, USA, full of good-hearted folks who put the "home" in their town.
Like living in a little town, it took a bit to settle into the routine of Mitford as lived by Father Timothy, the fussy old Episcopal priest. But Father Tim, his quirky parishioners, and neighbors ease into the folds of your heart as memories of small-town living are re-lived. Supposedly, Mitford is Karon’s own Blowing Rock, N.C. It is surely my Allentown, your Cranbury or Bordentown or Roosevelt.
The series featuring Mitford includes "At Home in Mitford," "A Light in the Window," "These High, Green Hills," "Out of Canaan," "A New Song" and "A Common Life" that fills in the wedding of Tim and Cynthia that Karon glossed over between books two and three.
With Frank Capra long gone, I wonder if Hollywood can fathom Mitford? A jewel thief hiding in the church attic finds salvation and goes to jail with an entire town standing behind him. A schizophrenic woman and her oddball husband are quietly supported by the town as they live independently albeit primitively in the decaying family mansion. A homeless man living up the mountain entertains Christmas carolers and invites the pastor to supper. The bachelor priest, without fanfare, takes in an abandoned 11-year-old. Where’s the sex, drugs, and violence that is mandatory in the story line for any television program or movie made today?
As in life, it is all there. The good deputy is shot while casing a cocaine ring’s hideout. Dooley’s mom, a hopeless drunk, throws her children away. Miss Sadie’s saintly mother had a child out of wedlock. The difference, however, between Karon’s tale and the Hollywood version, is that the bad stuff is just background. The real story is in the good stuff, all the little day-to-day stuff that makes life worth living.
A Hollywood insider took an informal poll among his colleagues. He asked, "How many people go to church or some form of worship weekly?" The sophisticates of the entertainment industry guessed 1 percent to 2 percent, maybe as high as 4 percent. The actual number is that more than 40 percent of the population of this country attend some form of worship each week. Recent polls regarding the current presidential race indicate that religion is a factor that voters attend to and that cuts across almost all social, political, racial, and economic grounds.
This population is who reads and appreciates the Mitford books. It does not seem at all odd that the folks in Mitford make sure Miss Rose and Uncle Billy are fed daily, or that Homeless Hobbes is respected for the lifestyle he chooses to live. They consider Dooley a most fortunate boy to have Father Tim (and his wide circle of capable and loving adults) to look after him, with never a thought that the authorities should be called in to find a suitable home. And they pray a lot and about everything. Not surprising to Karon’s characters or her reading audience, prayers are answered. Hollywood may think, "How quaint." Mainstream USA thinks, "How true."
Karon in her acknowledgments thanks a host of folks who supported her efforts in writing the first Mitford book. These include the local paper which serialized it and the "ladies of the volunteer library" and, she notes, "everyone who buys this book about a small town that does more than exist in the imagination it really is out there."
She had me before I read page one. I’ve succumbed to the magic of Mitford and can’t wait to go back.
Joan Ruddiman, Ed.D. is a teacher and friend of the Allentown Public Library.