These High, Green Hills

The third installment in The Mitford Years series follows Father Timothy Kavanagh, the Episcopal rector of Lord's Chapel in the small mountain town of Mitford, North Carolina, as he adjusts to married life, confronts crises in his parish, and wrestles with questions about his future.

Father Tim, who married for the first time in his 60s, watches his new wife, Cynthia Kavanagh, a children's book author and illustrator, haul belongings through the hedge separating the rectory from her little yellow house next door. She wants to merge their households into "an organic whole," while he clings to his bachelor routines. They settle on a practical arrangement: They sleep at the rectory, and Cynthia works in her studio next door. Despite the friction of adjustment, Father Tim's happiness deepens daily, and he compares his new contentment to the manna God provided the Israelites.

Autumn brings familiar rhythms but also grief. Dr. Hoppy Harper, the town physician, calls Father Tim to the hospital to pray for a critically ill child, Angie Burton. Despite prayers from the surgical team and the rector, Angie dies. Father Tim and Cynthia grieve alongside Angie's mother and surviving sister, and Father Tim feels helpless. Meanwhile, the church vestry, the parish governing board, mandates a computer system for the office, horrifying both Father Tim and his secretary, Emma Newland.

Father Tim grows concerned about his oldest parishioner, Miss Sadie Baxter, who lives with her lifelong companion, Louella, in Fernbank, the rambling estate her father built. The two elderly women reveal that climbing the house's 29 stairs has become so difficult they sometimes stay upstairs for days. Father Tim conceives a plan to move them to a modern, one-floor house belonging to Olivia Davenport, Miss Sadie's recently discovered great-niece. When Olivia calls to propose the same idea, Miss Sadie initially hesitates but then agrees.

Father Tim visits Absalom Greer, a 90-year-old retired preacher who held a summer camp meeting at Little Mitford Creek, a desperately impoverished community nearby. Absalom recounts how a young girl named Lacey Turner declared she wanted to be saved during his preaching, sparking a wave of baptisms. He worries about who will care for these new believers, especially Lacey, whose father beats her and whose mother is bedridden. Father Tim promises to help, though he has no idea how.

Dooley Barlowe, the boy Father Tim took in years ago, returns from the Virginia prep school funded by Miss Sadie. He is cold and withdrawn, telling Father Tim and Cynthia, "You're not my family. I don't have a family." Father Tim learns that a classmate betrayed Dooley's trust by spreading details about his broken family throughout the school. He takes Dooley for a direct talk, increasing his allowance but tying it to good behavior, and affirms that they are his family. Dooley is later selected for his school chorus's European tour, and when he calls from Paris, he uses the word "home" for the first time.

The computer equipment, stored in Father Tim's car trunk, is destroyed when another driver rear-ends the car. Father Tim shouts "Hallelujah!" knowing insurance delays will postpone the dreaded installation for months.

Spring brings Cynthia's ambitious redecoration of the rectory for her First Annual Primrose Tea. When Father Tim's car breaks down on the same day as Dooley's school concert in Virginia, Omer Cunningham, the mayor's brother-in-law, flies him there in a tiny airplane. On the return trip, Father Tim gets an aerial view of the Creek's poverty that stays with him.

Father Tim and Cynthia join the youth group on a camping trip. When two boys discover a cave, Cynthia insists on exploring it, but her flashlight dies and plunges them into total darkness. Lost for approximately 14 hours, they grow cold and desperate. Father Tim falls off a ledge and gashes his head. In the darkness, suppressed memories of his cold, demanding father surface, and he weeps openly. Cynthia tells him that "getting it absolutely right is God's job" and presses him to confront his feelings about retirement. He confesses he cannot stop because he feels driven to keep getting it right. His dog, Barnabas, fitted with a miner's lamp, leads a rescue team to them. Afterward, Father Tim realizes the lesson of the cave is forgiveness: of his father, of the need to control outcomes.

One night, Lacey Turner appears at the rectory door, brutally beaten by her father for refusing to steal ferns and rhododendrons to sell. Cynthia bathes and bandages her wounds. Father Tim files a report with social services, but the investigation moves slowly. During Lace's periodic visits, she mentions a woman named Pauline Barlowe who lives at the Creek and helps her. Father Tim is stunned to learn that Pauline is Dooley's long-missing mother, who formerly had a severe alcohol addiction and was changed by the camp meeting. Cynthia counsels Father Tim to leave the situation alone and pray that mother and son continue healing separately.

Dooley returns for summer but announces he will spend the entire break at Meadowgate Farm with veterinarian Hal Owen rather than at the rectory. Father Tim and Cynthia are devastated. After painful conversations and eventual forgiveness, Father Tim accepts the boy's choice. Dooley thrives, delivering twin calves he names Jessie and Kenny after his lost sister and brother. On a Sunday visit, he tells Father Tim and Cynthia, "I love you back."

Father Tim hires Scott Murphy as chaplain for Hope House, the nursing home Miss Sadie funded. Scott found Mitford after dreaming the town's name appeared on a black curtain. Miss Sadie approves the hire enthusiastically. Shortly after her 90th birthday celebration, Miss Sadie falls and breaks her hip. Surgery follows, but she develops congestive heart failure and declines.

A severely burned woman from the Creek is admitted to the hospital, identified only by initials on a bracelet. Father Tim sits with her through agonizing dressing changes. When her breathing tube is removed, she reveals her name: Pauline Barlowe. The initials belong to Lester Marshall, the violent man who burned her with kerosene. Pauline tells Father Tim she wants to start over and agrees that Dooley should remain in school under his care.

Miss Sadie dies peacefully on June 30. Father Tim tolls the death bell 20 times, waking the village. A letter she wrote on his wedding day reveals she has left $1.25 million in trust for Dooley, to be received at 21, with income for college at 18. She instructs Father Tim never to mention the inheritance until Dooley can bear it with dignity. At the memorial service, Louella and Dooley sing "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" together.

Lace is placed with Olivia and Hoppy Harper as foster parents. She reveals that Poobaw, Pauline's 10-year-old son and Dooley's brother, is hiding at a trailer on the Creek. Father Tim retrieves the boy on a nighttime expedition. Poobaw is reunited with his mother at the hospital and then with Dooley at Meadowgate.

Father Tim calls Stuart Cullen, his bishop and close friend, to announce he will retire in two years. The cave experience, he explains, freed him from the compulsion of trying to get it right, a drive rooted in his relationship with his father. On a retreat, he and Cynthia list what they want in retirement: four seasons, hills, a small house, a big yard. They laugh when they realize Mitford itself meets every requirement and decide to stay, planning to enlarge the little yellow house.

Hope House opens with a grand celebration, and Louella moves into Room Number One. Father Tim and Cynthia muscle the long-contested armoire from her house into the rectory guest room. Cynthia immediately decides it belongs in the bedroom instead but agrees to wait until spring. Father Tim, exhausted but smiling, accepts the perpetual rearrangement as part of the marriage and the life he has come to treasure.