Review by Booklist Review
Jane Hubbell Kinneson is the sole owner and last resident of Kingdom Mountain, Vermont, a wild and unspoiled place on the U.S.-Canadian border in 1930. Outside forces led by her cousin Eben are trying to get the Connector, a new highway that will run through the mountain, pushed through. Miss Jane says, Over my dead body, and means it. On her fiftieth birthday, stunt pilot and rainmaker Henry Satterfield crashes his biplane on her lake. Miss Jane offers him shelter and Henry joins her fight against the Connector. Henry is in Vermont to solve the riddle his Confederate grandfather left him about the location of stolen federal gold. The two go to the state supreme court, put on a wing-walking show, and eventually become lovers. Miss Jane is a fascinating character, and the host of small-town Vermonters who populate the story are little gems, both hilarious and poignant. It's not hard to see where the story is going, but the scenery along the way is well worth the trip. --Elizabeth Dickie Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Mosher's 11th book is the first-rate, offbeat chronicle of Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson's eventful 50th year in 1930. Ex-teacher, woodcarver, librarian, basketball coach and current self-appointed steward of the wild and pristine town of Kingdom Mountain, Vt., Miss Jane ("The Duchess") is entrenched in a battle against her cousin Eben and the town elders who want to build a highway and ski resort on her beloved mountain. Jane, as endearing as she is odd and independent-minded, looks to be in over her head until stunt pilot Henry Satterfield crashes his biplane near her home. Theatrical, dashing Henry recovers at Jane's place, and a romance blossoms. Henry also brings with him an old family riddle from Texas that he believes, if solved, will lead him and Jane to a lost Confederate treasure rumored to be hidden on the mountain. But all manner of heartbreak looms. Mosher (Waiting for Teddy Williams; The True Account; etc.) weaves homespun humor, a provincial New England setting and eccentric characters to create a satisfying, unique novel. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Award-winning writer Mosher (A Stranger in the Kingdom) places his new novel once again in mythical Kingdom County, a region in northeastern Vermont. There, in 1930, resides Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson, an eccentric library/bookstore proprietor and bird carver of Scottish and Native American ancestry. Jane is also the last remaining heir to mile-high Kingdom Mountain, a vast unspoiled wilderness that includes streams where a rare species of blue trout spawn. When she learns that a new road, the Connector, is scheduled to be built on the mountain, she makes a firm stand against it. As she goes up against the local politicos, a stranger, aviator Henry Satterfield, literally flies into her lonely life, giving her both companionship and support. Having designs of his own regarding Kingdom County, Henry recruits Jane in his search for clues concerning stolen gold coins and the unsolved disappearance of her uncle, Pilgrim. Offering a dose of magic realism and an assortment of odd, endearing characters, this novel takes another good look at the ongoing struggle between progress and preservation. In the midst of it all, with humor and wistfulness, he has also fashioned a love story. Recommended for all public libraries.-Maureen Neville, Trenton P.L., NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Plucky spinster and rakish pilot meet cute in 1930s Vermont. Sentimentality, laced with whimsy, oozes like syrup--sleep-inducing stuff. Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson, still "strikingly attractive" at 50, tucks lustily into her vittles. Duchess of Kingdom Mountain, über-quaint hamlet astride the U.S.-Canada border, she needs the carbs for fighting progress in the form of a proposed highway. Mosher (Waiting for Teddy Williams, 2004, etc.) cuts his characters out of industrial-strength cardboard, and we can file Jane under "eccentric." She's fixin' to conquer the North American Bird Carving Contest; as "bookwoman extraordinaire," she runs the Atheneum, a library peopled with life-sized figurines of fusty lit gods (Dr. Johnson, Twain, Dickens). Improbably, in lectures to nodding villagers, she rails at Shakespeare, decrying "The Pretender of Avon." Something like real life arrives when Henry Satterfield, proprietor of "Flying Circus Rainmaking and Pyrotechnic Services Beaumont Texas" crashes his biplane into her yard. Soon enough comes mutual eye-moistening, as Miss JHK is smitten by the galoot whose "gentlemanliness seemed very genuine." But, goshdarnit, it's not! Turns out the rogue is after $100,000 in "double-eagle twenty-dollar gold pieces," stolen from Kingdom Common by dastardly Confederates back in Civil War days. He heard tell of the treasure from his grandpappy. Aswoon, Miss Jane's unsuspecting; besides, she's got her hawk-carving hands full contending with cousin Eben Kinneson Esquire, fat-cat bossman of the Great North Woods Pulp and Paper Company, who's itchin' to run the highway through Jane's Kingdom and despoil its pristine splendor. Readers with the patience for "yarns" may thrill to the clotted-yet-clichd story and fall hard for the Cato-quoting Jane, doughty-yet-democratic dame who's enemy of all things bad but a good friend to even the town's fishmonger, Canvasback Glodgett (!). "Storytelling" run amok. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
