Walking to Gatlinburg

Just months before the end of the Civil War, 17 year old Morgan Kinneson is helping an elderly former slave escape to Canada; his family are "conductors" on the Underground Railroad. As the evening falls, Morgan follows the trail of a moose big enough to feed his family through the long winter to come. He leave for only a few minutes, but upon his return he finds his "passenger" dead. Morgan soon sets off to find his brother, reported to have died in Gettysburg. This trip will take him through that battlefield and eventually to Gatlinburg as the plot lines converge. Fans of the Kinneson family saga will need no encouragement to read this book, and those unfamiliar with the tales will enjoy the author's clear prose and clever dialog. One note: Despite some surface similarities, this should not be considered similar in any significant way to "Cold Mountain." In tone and effect, it's quite different, although very engaging.

I have read many (but not all) of Mr. Mosher's previous works, and enjoyed them very much. This latest one is another that gave me great pleasure in reading. Basically, the plot revolves around Morgan Kinneson, a 17 year old lad from the mythical Kingdom County, Vermont, who travels South to find his brother Pilgrim, an army surgeon who disappears during the battle of Gettysburg. There are excellent characters in this book, fantastic (even if somewhat mystifying) incidents, and a story told in a way that uplifts the reader. We find good people and bad, helpful ones and not so helpful ones, blacks and whites, and several beautiful young ladies of both races. It's a quest tale, but also one of family ties, brotherly love, and also young love. To tell any more would be to spoil an excellent read for others. All I will say is that you shouldn't miss reading this book!

IN the wake of the Civil War the forces of evil have risen throughout the land. A farrago of wild and outre characters run amuck in a debased world: gangs of marauders, Union and Confederate deserters, blood thirsty killers, psychotics, whack-jobs of every description, loose and ravaging the countryside. Into this menagerie steps Morgan Kinneson, half Luke Skywalker, half Dirty Harry Callahan; an avenging angel from the Northland walking south in search of his brother, Pilgrim, presumed dead on a war battlefield. Guided to his destination by a series of runic signs, Morgan slays a score of monsters in human form along the way--the monsters ex-slavers after a talismanic stone given Morgan by a runaway slave he escorted along the Underground Railroad. Reasons for the slavers interest in the stone are obscure. Obscure too the plot; a bit contrived as well--absurd even--but it works. The story is reviting--most of the time. One outlandish and gruesome scene after the next. Part fairy tale, Sci-Fy novel, the Arabian Nights, Alice in Wonderland, and "Road Warrior." Morgan, the Man of Justice, fights not only against the evil-doers but evil itself--personified by Ludi Too, aka Oconaluftee ("Carajou" in Mosher's 1st novel DISAPPEARANCES). In the ultimate scene, Morgan meets the face of evil and recognizes his image in it. Throwing his gun into the chasm is his renunciation of the evil self. Allegory clothed in a neo-Gothic Western and Knights of the Round Table romance. The novel is not without faults. The black characters sound like Frenchy LaMott, the Canuck butcher boy of previous Mosher novels. The long description of the making of Morgan's gun is a bit of pedantry that only slows the pace. Minor faults these, in Mosher's deepest and most mature novel to date--closer in spirit to DISAPPEARANCES (1977) than more recent works. Same anarchic travelogue structure as his 2003 novel THE TRUE ACCOUNT. Give it four and one-half stars (maybe three quarters!). W.F. Burke, author KINGDOM COME: The Fiction of Howard Frank Mosher (2005).

Another great read from my new favorite author. Mosher weaves a tale of a journey from Vermont to Gatlinburg full of historical characters, oddball Civil War types, monsters and villains and just plain folk he meets along the way. The book is a page turner - I wish it was 500 pages longer. Another triumph for Mosher.

Morgan Kinneson, from Kingdom County, Vermont, does indeed walk to Gatlinburg and even deeper into the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee (but not to the North Carolina side--the water tastes bad there, a mountaineer tells him) during the last year of the Civil War. But this is neither a standard road story nor a Civil War story. It is more fable than historical fiction. It is odd, disconcerting, and elegiac--the closest comparison I can think of in terms of its journey, scope, and reach for the fantastic is Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon: A Novel. Morgan starts his quest in search of his brother after he has made a grave mistake in judgment that cost a man who had been entrusted to his care his life. His brother is likewise considered dead, most likely killed in the great conflagration at Gettysburg in 1863. But nine months later, Morgan will attempt to atone for his sin and confirm his faith that his brother is alive. I use these spiritual terms advisedly, because there is much that is spiritual in Morgan's journey. He sees things, even the gray things of life, through the flinty eyes of a native Vermonter in shades of only black and white. But this is no spiritualized mythology. This is a real journey through a fantastic time and place. At times author Mosher walks the line of fact and fable so finely that you have to re-read to be sure he's meant what he said. Did Morgan really meet a mad old general firing anything he can cram into the barrel of a cannon at the birds surrounding a deserted fort? Did he really inherit an elephant from a dying circus Gypsy, and then use the elephant to tow a canal boat on the Erie Canal and clear a log jam on a river? The answer is yes, and the wonder is amazing. We see a landscape, a nation, and a people,, even far north of Gettysburg, scarred and changed by war, willing and even forced to see and believe the unfathomable. Morgan see's and processes as well. And he survives, always taking the direct approach to his adventures and trials, yet coming away changed, as the journey south toward his brother and his destination teach him new ways to think and believe, without changing who he is. But don't let me scare you away thinking this is a deep mystical book that walks with its head in the clouds. It is firmly planted in joy, pain, and the dirt of real life. Indeed, one may say Morgan is the most optimistic person in the world he inhabits in spite of or perhaps because of his journey. Oh, and I haven't told you one thing you need to know about Morgan that makes his character the more true yet the more fabulously heroic--he is 17 years old when he starts on his journey, and only 18 when it ends, with a lifetime of wisdom you will only glimpse on the very last page, which you will read to the end. Best book I've read in a long time.