Points North

November 13, 2017
Mosher’s lyrical stories, published posthumously (he died in January 2017), stand as a last testament to his place among the best regional American writers of his day. Set in mythic Kingdom County, Vt., and pegged loosely on seven generations of the Kinneson clan, the tales follow misfits and locals, upstanding and outcast. Readers become acquainted with Jim Kinneson, editor of the weekly Kingdom Common Monitor, and his brother Charles, a local judge, as they hunt, fish, and grow old observing the place of their birth. Hopping back and forth across the years, stories tell of a runaway slave (“What Pliny Knew”) and of Cousin Bear (“Kingdom of Heaven”), a dress-wearing savant whose handmade violin, “as sweet as first-run maple syrup,” is destroyed by greed. In “Good Sam Merryton,” a mysterious itinerant preacher manages to settle a decades-long feud between the only two churches in town. In “Dispossessed,” the Kinneson boys are no match for the Feds when they decide to build a dam that will destroy the bogs and gores they and their ancestors have known for generations. Mosher’s rich language makes art from both history and the quotidian, from bigotry and courage to fishing flies and brook trout, a species that “found the boreal Kingdom suitable to their needs, and stayed on. Like the Kinnesons themselves.”

December 1, 2017

Kingdom County, VT, situated just south of the Canadian border, is magical, a place of natural beauty full of small-town romances, animosities, and enduring traditions. The Kingdom was settled by a variety of rebels and misfits in the 1600s, among them the Kinneson family, who are the focus of the stories here. There are very few secrets in town. Everyone is related to everyone else, and each generation is linked to those of the past and the future. In one story, an itinerant preacher comes and goes, leaving the locals bemused and perhaps better for his visit. In other pieces, a long-lost love is reclaimed, a long-standing feud ends in death, and an unsolved mystery is finally explained. Readers will get the feeling that life will go on uninterrupted in the Kingdom no matter what troubles besiege the outside world. With elegant prose, Mosher (God's Kingdom, Northern Borders) skillfully creates characters of depth and interest, filling his stories with gentle humor and emphasizing the ties that make and preserve family history. The author completed this book only a few weeks before his death in January 2017. VERDICT This recommended book will appeal to general readers and those who appreciate family stories. [See Prepub Alert, 8/2/17.]--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2017
The Kinneson clan has populated, ruled, observed, and chronicled the remote territory of Kingdom County in northeastern Vermont for centuries. Their ranks include judges and newspapermen, teachers and doctors, sheriffs and con artists, flamboyant handymen and cantankerous farmers. Across their paths come swindlers and preachers (often one and the same), slave drivers and vigilantes, fetching girls and resolute women. In his final work of indelible fiction, a short-story collection, Mosher (God's Kingdom, 2015) once again flits back and forth in time to paint unforgettable portraits of this iconic family and their country cohorts. Mosher's tales include such irresistible characters as Cousin Bear Kinneson, a housedress-wearing mountain of a man who can rock a fiddle and repair a piano; Two Fingers Kinneson and his brother, City of St. Louis, carnival roadies who take to the highway chasing accidents; and, of course, brothers Charlie and Jim, who revere Kingdom County's glory.Deceptive in their simplicity, Mosher's stories poignantly illuminate complex themes of loyalty and identity and can rightfully be called American classics.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)