In This Mountain

This installment in Jan Karon's Mitford Years series follows Father Tim Kavanagh, a retired Episcopal priest in his late sixties, through a season of crisis and renewal in the small mountain town of Mitford, North Carolina. Managing diabetes and adjusting to life after nearly four decades in ministry, Father Tim lives with his wife, Cynthia, a celebrated children's book author and illustrator, in their yellow house. He is dogged by persistent restlessness and a nagging sense of unworthiness.

Father Tim visits his bishop and longtime friend, Stuart Cullen, who shares his dream of building a log cathedral for their impoverished diocese. Father Tim reveals his own aspiration: He and Cynthia plan to work with Our Own Backyard (OOB), a mission project serving Appalachian children in Tennessee. The mission is deeply personal. Father Tim's unofficially adopted son, Dooley Barlowe, was once a neglected mountain boy, and Lace Harper, a young woman close to the family, escaped a desperate childhood. Father Tim wants to help other children like them. Stuart gives his blessing.

Meanwhile, Cynthia wins her second Davant Medal, one of publishing's highest honors, and is invited to tour the country with a literacy program called READ. She declines because of the Tennessee plans. Father Tim is privately troubled by flashes of jealousy over Cynthia's success, recognizing with shame that his real fear is losing her.

A central thread involves Dooley's fractured family. Two of his five siblings, Poo and Jessie, have been found and now live with their mother, Pauline, and her husband, Buck Leeper. But Sammy and Kenny Barlowe have been missing for over nine years. Father Tim asks his former secretary, Emma Newland, to search for Clyde Barlowe, Dooley's abusive birth father who has an alcohol addiction, hoping he can provide leads to the missing boys. The search turns up nothing, and a name Dooley recalls, one of Clyde's drinking companions, also leads nowhere.

Throughout this period, Father Tim neglects his health, skipping meals, cutting back on insulin without medical approval, and failing to replace a broken blood sugar monitor. His doctor, Hoppy Harper, adds 10 units to each daily insulin shot and threatens to cancel the Tennessee trip. Driving home from Meadowgate Farm, Father Tim blacks out behind the wheel and crashes into First Baptist pastor Bill Sprouse, killing Sprouse's dog, Sparky. He falls into a coma lasting nearly 48 hours, drifting through dreams of his parents and encounters with the deceased Miss Sadie, a beloved former parishioner, and her companion Louella. He wakes in Mitford Hospital to Hoppy's verdict: Tennessee is canceled.

What follows is a grinding descent into depression. Father Tim can barely walk his dog, loses his appetite, and cannot laugh. Stuart visits and administers communion. Night after night, Father Tim reads Scripture, searching for a message from God. He stops taking his antidepressant and clings to devotional writer Oswald Chambers's observation that songbirds are taught to sing in the dark. He insists Cynthia attend the Davant ceremony in New York and ventures haltingly back into the world alone.

A crucial break comes when Hélène Pringle, a French piano teacher renting the old rectory, mentions seeing a boy in the nearby town of Holding who looked exactly like Dooley. Father Tim realizes it could be Sammy. Hélène drives him to Holding, where a pharmacist confirms a boy named Sammy Barlowe frequents the area, but a local hustler misleads them and they return empty-handed. Father Tim fails to tell Cynthia about the trip, and when she discovers evidence of it, she feels betrayed by his silence, which echoes her first husband's infidelity. He begs forgiveness and vows never to hide things from her again.

Father Tim insists Cynthia accept the READ tour, recognizing she deserves it and that he needs time alone to rebuild. With Buck Leeper's imposing presence, he returns to Holding and finds a house trailer by a river where Clyde lives with Sammy. Clyde denies the boy's existence, but Sammy eventually appears, brandishing a stick and stuttering threats. Father Tim lays out photographs of Dooley, Jessie, and Poo. Sammy resists but cannot hide his longing. Father Tim discovers the boy has created a remarkable wild garden of transplanted native plants, revealing a gift inherited from his grandfather, Russell Jacks, Lord's Chapel's legendary gardener.

The novel's emotional center arrives when Father Tim supplies the pulpit at Lord's Chapel for two Sundays. For the second sermon, he struggles all week. At two in the morning, he tells God he will not let Him go until He blesses him, and God speaks to his heart: Stop seeking what you want to hear, and listen. He finds four words in First Thessalonians: "In everything, give thanks." He preaches this as God's personal commission, thanking God not only for blessings but for afflictions, confessing that he has never thanked God for his own hard season.

George Gaynor, a former jewel thief who confessed his crimes at Lord's Chapel eight years earlier, settles into Mitford after his release from prison, sharing the rectory basement with his housemate Harley Welch. Hope Winchester, the bookstore manager, develops an infatuation with George but eventually recognizes her feelings as deep friendship. Uncle Billy Watson, an elderly townsman with congestive heart failure, devotes himself to finding a joke that will make Father Tim laugh. After several failed attempts, he delivers three jokes that finally make Father Tim laugh until he cries, marking a turning point in both men's spirits.

Father Tim brings Dooley, Jessie, and Poo to meet Sammy at a converted gas station run by Lon Burtie, a Vietnam veteran who has informally looked after the boy. The children pile onto each other in tearful joy, and Dooley embraces his brother in silence. George announces he is leaving Mitford for prison ministry in Connecticut. That evening, he leads Hope through a prayer of faith over the phone. Hélène, overhearing from the landing, silently repeats the prayer, transforming her tentative spiritual searching into genuine belief.

Father Tim agrees to conduct a service for an anonymous donor to the Children's Hospital but discovers it is a trap set by Edith Mallory, the wealthy, manipulative woman who has pursued him for years. Locked in a room with her, he obeys the command to love his enemies, takes her hand, and prays for her with fierce intercession. Edith weeps, admits she despises him because he believes and she cannot, then dismisses him. The following weekend, Edith's estate, Clear Day, burns to the ground due to faulty wiring. She survives but suffers severe brain and motor injuries.

As fall arrives, threads converge. Before the fire, Edith had arranged to deed land to the town containing grave sites from Mitford's founding era, vindicating the quest of Coot Hendrick, a local history enthusiast. Father Tim and Cynthia accept an offer to farm-sit at Meadowgate the following year. Sammy agrees to come for Thanksgiving. Dooley calls, jubilant, to report that Lace has finally returned his phone call after a year and a half. Rain breaks a long drought over Mitford. Father Tim and Cynthia run out into it like children, then return home to baked potatoes, good news, and the quiet certainty that the season of darkness has given way to springs.