God's Kingdom

August 1, 2015
Mosher (The Great Northern Express, 2012, etc.) finds a coming-of-age story in God's Kingdom, "up in the little known mountains of northern Vermont hard by the Canadian border." The tale follows Kinneson fathers and sons across the centuries, as revealed by the curiosity of high schooler and budding writer Jim Kinneson during the early 1950s. Described in Prairie Home Companion-like storytelling chapters, the Kingdom Kinnesons originate with Charles, who trekked into "Territory but Little Known" in 1759 and led a massacre of Abenaki Indians, only to return later and marry Molly Molasses, an Abenaki. In the early 19th century, "Abolition Jim" Kinneson was killed by federal troops because he led God's Kingdom to secede from the United States over the issue of slavery. In blackly comic stories, often melancholy or ripe with realism, characters are shaped by a land of isolated beauty, where winter weather can linger far below zero. Teetotaling Kinnesons once operated the Water of Life whiskey distillery, and they live on the "farm that wasn't," which only begins to flourish in Jim's time under the stewardship of the itinerant Black Canadian Dubois family. Sadly, it's young Gaetan Dubois, math genius and hockey demon, who learns "the great dangers of this place they called God's Kingdom lay closer to home." Amid hunting and fishing, baseball and school, Jim falls in love with a beautiful girl from the Ile d'Illusion, worships his grandfather, and uncovers the ugly truth about "the trouble in the family" between great-grandfather "Mad Charlie" and his best friend, the Rev. Doctor Pliny Templeton, an escaped slave, Princeton seminary graduate, war hero, and founder of Kingdom Common Academy. No Catcher in the Rye angst here. Instead you'll find a welcome dose of nostalgic realism laced with hard-edged wisdom.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2015
Northeastern Vermont is beautiful and daunting, seductive when the leaves turn crimson, terrifying when blizzard winds whip down from Canada. It was called God's Kingdom by its earliest settlers, who hoped it wouldn't turn into a hell on earth. To that unknown came Scottish immigrant Charles Kinneson, whose generations of descendants would contribute in noble and notorious ways to the lore of the region. Destined to be his family's scribe, young Jim Kinneson pays particular attention to the tales told by his grandfather and assorted relatives, finding himself repulsed by acts of barbarity and attracted to the occasions when justice was properly, if inventively, served. In his eleventh book of fiction, a novel-in-stories, much-acclaimed Vermont writer Mosher's (The Great Northern Express, 2012) thoughtful, clear-eyed unraveling of small-town life, warts and all, is powerful in its simplicity and soaring in its embrace of universal truths. And plucky, bright Jim Kinneson deserves a place in the pantheon of other such laudable young men memorably rendered by the likes of Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and Tony Earley.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)