Fr. Kriss (left), with Dr. Jan Karon and Bishop Edward
Salmon, Chairman of the Nashotah House Board of Trustees.
Jan Karon, the author of a series of award-winning novels about an Episcopal priest in the fictional town of Mitford, North Carolina, has donated autographed copies of three of her books to the library of St. Paul's parish. As her website says, "there are Mitfords all over the country, those hundreds of towns where readers of Jan's books cherish their own cast of eccentric and beloved characters." Salem, New York, is just such a place.
The parish priest at St. Paul's, Fr. Gary Kriss, met Jan Karon in the spring of 2000 when she visited Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin to receive an honorary degree. Fr. Kriss was Dean of the seminary at that time. The citation for her honorary doctorate said this about her:
The career of Jan Karon as a novelist is a Christian vocation which was foreshadowed at her Baptism when she was christened Janice Meredith after the title of a novel which was popular in the year of her birth. By the age of six, young Jan believed that she would become a preacher. At the age of ten, she was certain that she would be an author. Half a century later, she is an author writing about a preacher....
Jan Karon's own commitments and
beliefs are evident in her writings. The faith of her heroes and
heroines in a personal God is her faith. The traditional values of the
communities in which she sets her characters are her values. The
world-view depicted in her novels, a world-view which is thoroughly
realistic about the existence of evil and faithfully confident about the
power of God to overcome that evil, is her world-view.
St. Paul's parish library has a selection of books of Christian interest, including educational and devotional books, as well as some religious-themed fiction. Jan Karon's gift enhances this collection and also reflects her own interests and commitments. The novella A Common Life closed a gap between two earlier books in the Mitford series, telling the story of Fr. Tim's proposal and marriage to his next-door neighbor, Cynthia, and filling readers in on the reactions of the people of Mitford to a rare and special event in the life of a parish.
A Mitford series spin-off offers something quite unusual. Patches of Godlight is presented as Fr. Tim's personal notebook, full of handwritten and inexpertly typed quotations he has gleaned from favorite writers through the years. In offering a glimpse into the mind and soul of Fr. Tim, this book not only fleshes out the character of her hero, it also reveals something of the author's own mind and soul. Clearly, the writers who inspire Fr. Tim are the writers who inspire Jan, as well. The passages she has chosen provide a banquet of inspiration and thought provoking reading. This is a book worthy of a permanent place on the nightstand.
Miss Fannie's Hat is a children's book. It is not about children--Miss Fannie is 99 years old! But it is a book written for children, a wonderful story, beautifully illustrated, and with a gentle but important moral for all readers. Clearly, Jan Karon is a writer for all ages. Jan's interest in children in general and her particular concern for children who have been abused, neglected or are otherwise disadvantaged are evident in the Mitford books. This concern has taken concrete form in her Mitford Children's Foundation which supports the work of children's hospitals and homes and other Christian ministries to children.
A note accompanying the gift to St. Paul's says that “the last of Fr. Tim’s adventures set in Mitford will be called A Light From Heaven”. Readers should look for it in bookstores in October.
