These High Green Hills

The Mitford Years

By Jan Karon
Lion Publishing, $19.95

ISBN 0745933882

More Tales From Mitford

Review by Sue Biddle

The mountain village of Mitford has an ordinary assortment of folks and events -- the town cafe regulars, the homeless community, and the new facility for the aging, but in These High Green Hills all experience the extraordinary through God's Word and prayer.

In Jan Karon's third novel about life in Mitford, North Carolina, we now find Father Tim, the sixty-something rector of The Lord's Chapel, adjusting to marriage to his neighbor Cynthia Coppersmith. Together, Tim and Cynthia grieve the loss of a beloved parishioner, experience temporary separation from their teenage foster son, redecorate their combined home, get lost in a cave, love, laugh, quarrel, and forgive with honesty and good humor.

While Father Tim adjusts to life with a wife and their housekeeper's twin baby daughters at home, he is adjusting to the installation of a new computer system at the church.

These High Green Hills is as thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying as the stories in Karon's award-winning At Home in Mitford (1994) and A Light in the Window (1995).

She gives credit for much of their content to her grandmother, the storyteller.

These novels appeal to garden lovers, animal lovers, and miracle lovers; they often compel readers to laugh out loud. We will long remember Mitford's townspeople, their rector and his wife and the compelling evidence of God's spirit in their midst.