Paul Michael Garrison<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Howard Frank Mosher, through God\u2019s Kingdom<\/em> in particular, has drawn frequent comparisons to Mark Twain, and with this book\u2019s rustic charm, strong sense of place, and episodic nature, it\u2019s easy to see why. But in some respects, structurally at least, this book owes a greater debt to Sherwood Anderson\u2019s Winesburg, Ohio<\/em>. Both books revolve around the coming of age of a young newspaperman who also is (or will be) a story writer. Both Anderson\u2019s George Willard and Mosher\u2019s Jim Kinneson seem to be favored sons of the town, frequently taken into counsel by various townsfolk, casting a wider net for stories.<\/p>\n While Mosher\u2019s book is called a novel, it could more accurately be termed a collection of interconnected stories, like Winesburg, Ohio<\/em>, in which the protagonist sometimes takes prominence but just as often serves as the observer or recorder to someone else\u2019s story. In God\u2019s Kingdom<\/em>, this could be Jim\u2019s fishing buddy\/principal or a fellow player on his baseball team. The events of one chapter (or story) rarely effect (or even affect) the events in the next. For example, one chapter relates the tragic demise of one of Jim\u2019s friends, and the next notes this occurrence only in passing. The tragedy is, in essence, contained to a single story. Perhaps the scope of the book, which takes Jim from age fourteen to the day he leaves for college, shows the fleeting impact that events have on a life.<\/p>\n The stories\u2019 connective tissue comes from a traditional chronology, a unity of setting, and a tight familial cast. The other thread woven through the collection is \u201cthe trouble\u201d in the Kinneson family\u2019s history, which refers to how Jim\u2019s abolitionist great-grandfather shot his best friend Pliny, an emancipated slave who served as the town\u2019s historian. Rather than a separate story, the final chapter acts as an epilogue unraveling this historical mystery. Though consistently referenced through the stories, the mystery is not a driving force to the action of any. Because the final revelation pertains to people outside these main narratives, it isn\u2019t truly compelling. It does, however, give the book a sense of conclusion, a commodity not to be overlooked in today\u2019s literature, and it provides Jim Kinneson with his true birthright, a needful thing for a young man heading into a bigger world.<\/p>\n The frequent delving into family and personal histories along with the book\u2019s 1950s setting suffuses the book with a feeling of nostalgia, both warm and regretful. And the book\u2019s warmth distinguishes it sharply from Winesburg, Ohio<\/em>, in which nearly every page is fraught with existential dread. Unlike George Willard, Jim Kinneson bears a deep and abiding love for his family and his home, and this is the ultimate source of the book\u2019s warmth.<\/p>\n Family and place, the two elements in the book so intertwined as to almost be one. As Pliny says, \u201cIn the Kingdom, all history was Kinneson family history\u201d (213). Kingdom Common and the surrounding forests, lakes, and rivers\u2014the nature of rural Vermont\u2014this is the true subject of the book. Mosher carefully renders Jim\u2019s home, its history and beauty and even its ugliness\u2014and the ugliness is there. Just as the book does not pass over the darkness in the Kinneson family history, it does not ignore the darkness of 1950s Vermont. The book makes much of the endemic racism of the era and of America\u2019s settlement, but what it documents more subtly and painfully is the destructive force of petty tyranny, showing it at work in nearly every corner of small-town life\u2014government, education, and workplace. Even with its faults, when Jim sets off for college, he grieves to leave Kingdom Common\u2014because it\u2019s home. Mosher has artfully built the relationship between this particular boy and this particular place so even if the reader hasn\u2019t experienced that homesickness\u2014though most of us have\u2014the pain feels true. But we know going forward that Jim will carry home and its stories with him.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n God’s Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n Howard Frank Mosher<\/p>\n St. Martin’s Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paul Michael Garrison Howard Frank Mosher, through God\u2019s Kingdom in particular, has drawn frequent comparisons to Mark Twain, and with this book\u2019s rustic charm, strong sense of place, and episodic nature, it\u2019s easy to see why. But in some respects, structurally at least, this book owes a greater debt to Sherwood Anderson\u2019s Winesburg, Ohio. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":540,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-written-by"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/540"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":593,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions\/593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}