For one weekend only, hundreds of devoted readers gathered in Hudson, North Carolina, to celebrate Mitford, a fictional place with a real sense of community. Jan Karon, the 88-year-old author behind Mitford, has written 15 books about the make-believe mountain village.
Asked how to describe the town of Mitford, Karon said it is “a place my readers can go and not be afraid. It’s a place of refuge. It’s where they can go, get a deep breath.”
The humanity of Karon’s characters has found a faithful following that’s perennially put her novels on the bestseller list. But for some people, she’s not a household name like other bestselling authors. Asked why, Karon said, “I don’t give you much of a ride. I just give you sort of a float! A lot of people tell me that my books put them to sleep, and I consider that a huge compliment!”
Karon’s super-fans say the books are more than page turners. According to Nellie McMasters, “We are in such an uncertain period, we’re in such turmoil, that it’s just a nice, pleasant place.”
“And it’s not divisive,” said Joellen Maurer. “This is just love your neighbor, know the people who live around you.”
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Asked if she believes places like Mitford exist in America today, Phyllis Farringer replied, “They do, where there’s a community of faith and people caring about each other, and I see it.”
Jan Karon was raised by her grandmother, Fannie, in Hudson, and attended elementary school there. Almost eight decades later, she converted the site to the Mitford Museum.
She credits her first grade teacher Nan Downs with encouraging her creativity. By age 10, Karon says, she knew she wanted to be a writer: “I stood in front of this very mirror, and I said, I’m going to be an author.”
How did she know? “I just knew,” Karon said. “I love to read. And so, I wanted to give other people what I received from reading, which was that whole other world.”
At 14, Karon found herself wanting to escape her world, so she got married, dropped out of school, and gave birth to her daughter, Candace, a year later. She was divorced at 18.
“A lot of it was really hard, because I became a single mom and had to raise her by myself when I myself had hardly been raised,” she said.
She worked a series of jobs, including TV producer. She was later fired, and says that was her turning point: “It brought me to my knees; I’d never been on my knees,” Karon said. “I was 42. I just went down: I don’t know what to pray for. I’m just here, and I need help and just change me.“
She became a successful advertising executive, but says she felt called to write more than ads. So, she quit her job, and began weaving her faith into her short stories. She published her work for free in a local newspaper, eventually turning those tales into her first Mitford novel, “At Home in Mitford,” in 1994.
I asked, “I think that when people think about your books and your work, they often think comforting, they think maybe clean, Christian.”
“I’m grateful for my Christian readers, very grateful,” Karon said. “But I write for a secular audience. God poured his love into me, and you can’t say, well, I just can’t talk about that in my books.”
Her latest Mitford work, “My Beloved,” is all about presence, aging, and connection. Karon says it was one of the most challenging things she’s ever written – and comes after having said she would never write another Mitford book.
In 2008, she began a short story set during Christmas, but it sat unfinished for more than a decade. In 2021, her daughter, Candace, died of cancer. Karon was moved to write through her grief. The finished work, now a novel, is dedicated to her daughter,
“She was the sunshine of my life,” Karon said of Candace.
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I asked, “Do you ever talk to her while you’re sitting here writing?”
“All the time,” she replied. “And I know this sounds corny, but it’s true for me, right here, she’ll say, ‘I hear you, Mom. It’s okay, Mom. Everything’s gonna be all right.'”
“How did losing Candace change your life?”
“I’m less judgmental,” Karon replied. “I’m a little easier, even on myself. And I’ve always been really hard on myself. I know that we don’t have forever anymore, which is a thing in this book. So, what can we do with this time? Something better than what we’re doing? Or even just something more fun? We don’t have to be noble all the time.”
Jan Karon invites us to look for community and neighborly love, to find our own kind of Mitford. “If you will just get in your car and drive out into America, I’m telling you, I can guarantee, I promise you, that it is out there. You have to look for it. It’s not going to come to you and sit on your doorstep. You’ve got to go out and get it, and it’s there for the taking.”
READ AN EXCERPT: “My Beloved” by Jan Karon
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Story produced by Robbyn McFadden. Editor: George Pozderec.
