Sunday, November 11, 2007

HOME TO HOLLY SPRINGS

By Jan Karon

Viking. 356 pp. $26.95

Mitford fans, rejoice! Jan Karon has begun a new series, this time centered on Father Tim Kavanagh. In the nine books that made up the "Mitford novels" (published from 1996 to 2005), readers befriended Father Tim, whose quiet bachelor rectorship in the hills of Mitford, N.C., was shaken up by all manner of people and events, including his (later adopted) ward, Dooley Barlow, and lovely blonde Cynthia (whose demeanor bears a marked resemblance to the author's).

Although the American South is known for fundamentalist Christian denominations, Karon makes her clergyman a betwixt-and-between Episcopalian. (Originally released by a Christian press, Karon's work was discovered in the mid-1990s by mainstream publishers.) Father Tim wouldn't know dogma if it bit him in the ankle. That open-mindedness serves him well in Home to Holly Springs, since his return to his boyhood Mississippi town requires dealing with characters who make Mitford's eccentrics look gentle.

Mostly, though, the characters Father Tim encounters are kind and giving -- it's the ones in his head who give him fits. He mourns his genteel, wise mother and yearns for the family's beloved cook, Peggy. His homeward drive (with his aging Labrador) inspires both good and bad feelings. The worst include any interaction with his troubled, aloof father: "Don't hurt him?" Tim remembers his father asking his mother. "What's the good of discipline if there's no hurt in it? Read your Baptist Bible, Madelaine." No wonder Tim chose Episcopal seminary.

But as painful as these memories of his father may be, they also form part of the answer to why Father Tim returns to Holly Springs after decades away. He receives a mysterious note that simply reads, "Come home." Like the obedient child he once was, Father Tim answers the summons -- and learns that you can go home again, as long as you're prepared for it to be wholly changed, and to change you, as well.

The novel is as far from perfect as Holly Springs is from Mitford, but it marks Karon's attempt to dig deeper, hoping readers will come along as they did with the first series.

-- Bethanne Patrick writes the Book Maven blog for Publishers Weekly.