A NEW SONG

This fifth installment in Karon’s popular Mitford Saga (Out to Canaan, 1997, etc.) follows Father Tim Kavanagh and his wife, Cynthia, as they wander farther afield to Whitecap Island, North Carolina. Now retired from his longtime post as rector of the Episcopal parish of Mitford, Father Tim accepts a position as “interim minister” at a parish on a small coastal island just off the nearby Outer Banks. Karon is an old-fashioned writer’she even addresses her opening lines to a Gentle Reader—and much of her story revolves around the homely details of cooking, socializing, and keeping house that are familiar to any minister’s wife or daughter. But domestic crises arise as well, and Father Tim and Cynthia both have to find ways to help parishioners who suffer from loneliness, depression, and other (usually secret) griefs. Much of their concern is for Dooley Barlowe, a‘’mountain boy” Tim took into his home at Mitford five years before and raised almost as his own son, sending him to a Virginia prep school for education and guidance. Dooley, now in his teens, has stayed behind in Mitford but soon finds himself back in the kind of trouble from which Father Tim and Cynthia have worked hard to extract him. A story of small traumas and small victories, Karon’s account manages to avoid the worst excesses of sentimentality and to provide a rather charming portrait of life in the slow lane. (Literary Guild selection; author tour)