Spring 2008
Shelf Life
Lost highway
Howard Frank Mosher's latest novel, "On Kingdom Mountain," is a romantic comedy in which bits and pieces of Vermont's rich history are transformed by the author's vivid imagination into a suspenseful and humorous epic.
Set in the Northeast Kingdom in 1930, the picaresque yarn somehow manages to combine a bank robbery, encroaching development, a Civil War riddle and a hidden treasure — all in the service of a Northeast Kingdom love story.
The novel's protagonists are two of Mosher's most memorable characters — Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson, a shotgun-toting schoolmarm known as the Duchess of Kingdom Mountain; and Henry Satterfield, an aviator, adventurer and sometime bank robber. Their fates become intertwined through the search for lost loot from a Civil War bank robbery (clearly modeled on the St. Albans Raid of 1864) and the looming disaster of a new highway planned for Kingdom Mountain.
The novel's conclusion and an epilogue are satisfying but bittersweet. Mosher clearly feels nostalgic for the rough-and-tumble days he knew before the coming of the Interstate, but the Northeast Kingdom could have no truer chronicler, no better teller of tales.
"On Kingdom Mountain" by Howard Frank Mosher, 276 pages, hardcover, $24, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston
— Tom Slayton
Wounded hearts
Jeffrey Lent's third novel is a very serious story indeed, one that involves deep family secrets and deeply wounded hearts.
Its hero, Hewitt Pearce, is recovering from a lost love on his family's Vermont farmstead, making his living as a blacksmith who creates high-end wrought-iron sculpture. Into his life, in a floral-painted Volkswagen, comes Jessica Kress, a fragile and extremely wary flower child who agrees to move in with Hewitt as long as he keeps his distance.
At virtually the same time, Hewitt learns that Emily, the woman who previously dumped him, has been widowed, and so off he goes in pursuit. From there the plot proceeds predictably, but the novel is saved by the undeniable beauty of Lent's writing and his obvious hands-on knowledge of rural life.
His descriptions of blacksmithing and farming technologies are fascinating and enjoyable to read. Hewitt's vision and attitudes are perceptive and carefully articulated, and Jessica even comes up with a precise, spot-on description of rural attitudes: "I always found country people pretty firm in their ideas," she says, "and scared that they're wrong, all at once."
Such insights are sprinkled liberally throughout this book and go a long way toward making the lugubrious plot palatable. Lent clearly has the potential to be a major literary talent.
"A Peculiar Grace" by Jeffrey Lent, 395 pages, hardcover, $25, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York
— Tom Slayton
Hard rain
In the epic flood of 1927, torrential rains drenched the state's already soggy countryside, and, by the time the waters subsided, 84 Vermonters had died. Virtually all of Vermont was affected, many places devastated.
The Cliffords' history painstakingly details the flood's shattering impact, but properly focuses most of its attention on the recovery and rebuilding.
The Cliffords cast their net wide — very wide — in studying the remarkable statewide reconstruction. The authors do not give great weight to the usual conclusion about the flood — that it catapulted Vermont into the modern world by bringing about an instant need for repairs and replacement of the state's rural roads and bridges. Instead, they argue that the state would have repaired its highway system with or without the flood. "In many cases," they write, "the disaster acted simply as a catalyst for changes already underway."
While the broad scope of their study makes for heavy going at times, it will give the dedicated reader a keen sense of the difficult times Vermont faced, and how Vermonters rallied from the worst catastrophe in its history — just in time to plunge into the Great Depression.
"The Troubled Roar of the Waters: Vermont in Flood and Recovery, 1927-1931" by Deborah Pickman Clifford and Nicholas R. Clifford, 229 pages, hardcover, $29.95, University Press of New England, Hanover, N.H., and London
— Tom Slayton