Jan Karon's "At Home in Mitford"

Everything good about small town life is in the Mitford Novels.

Sorry, kids. I just can't seem to get with the program. We got started reading our big Sherlock Holmes collection back in May and we'll finish it tonight with The Final Problem. Of course, as everyone knows, it turned out not to be the final problem at all. The public simply wouldn't let Conan Doyle kill off such a popular character as Holmes.

It has been such a pleasure to re-read all these stories. One or two were actually knew to me.

How different was the England of that time! Morally, it was better, in that it tolerated less of open immorality and crime. Socially, it was worse, in that everyone still had to "know their place," just as you see in the earlier novels in the same century by Dickens. Upward social mobility happened, but it was still frowned upon by many. Politically, it was better. England was becoming a more free and just land all the time, I think. It had certainly come a long way since the days of the events surrounding Charles I which produced The Musgrave Ritual.

When it was time to go into a dangerous situation, neither Mr. Holmes nor Dr. Watson would hesitate to drop a revolver in his pocket. And no one would have dreamed of questioning their right to do so. Today, England is rife with violent crime, virtually no one can legally own or carry a firearm, and even knives have been prohibited. Like our legislators, Parliament myopically insists that the problem is with the availability of arms. But the real cause of crime and degradation in both our societies is a loss of the desire to do what is right.

Sheryl and I are supposed to pick the book for August, I think. We hope everyone will find time to read the wonderful first-in-the-series Mitford novel. It is called At Home in Mitford. Jan Karon is the author. She's pretty good. Let me warn you, though, that her characters are so delightful that you'll feel as though you've known them all your life. And when you finish one novel, you'll dash out to grab the next one just because you want to keep up on everyone's life.

The thing that really amazes me about her work is that there is virtually no violence in it except for one deputy stopping a .25 slug one time, but he's up and around in time for his wedding. No embarrassing scenes, either. Just good people going about their daily activities, trying to be the best people they know how to be. We've been through the whole series about four times now. Sheryl and I will often refer to events and characters in the Jan Karon novels as casually as we might mention friends and family in the real world.

The first novel starts out slowly, but within two or three chapters you're already hooked on the tiniest little dilemmas. When we lived in Boise, I actually parked the car and walked into an Episcopal (Anglican or Church of England) chapel one time. I wanted to get the feel of where everyone sat and how everything might look in Mitford's "Lord's Chapel." There's nothing anti-Mormon in them. In fact, the name of our church never comes up. The closest it came to happening was when the Baptist and Episcopal preachers combined their choirs for a special event and one of them bragged, "This is a regular Tabernacle affair" or words to that effect.

We cannot recommend these novels too highly. They'll give you the warm, relaxed feeling of living in a small town, surrounded by kind, decent people. They have their funny little traits and even a few faults, but they're all basically good folks. You'll love them.