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Karon, Jan
Date of birth: 1937
Profession: Authors; Novelists; Authors
Biography from Current Biography (2003)Copyright
(c) by The H. W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.
Jan Karon is the author of a highly popular series
of novels that center on Father Timothy Kavanagh, an Episcopal
minister, and the fictional village of Mitford, North Carolina, in
the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Karon's books,
including At Home in Mitford (1994), A Light in the Window (1995),
These High, Green Hills (1996), Out to Canaan (1997), A New Song
(1999), A Common Life: The Wedding Story (2001), and In This
Mountain (2002), are written out of a deep, unabashed faith in
God. Karon, a teenage mother who was divorced at age 20, worked in
the advertising industry for 32 years; she then decided, when she
was 50, to leave her executive position--thereby giving up her
health insurance, retirement benefits, and other amenities--to
pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a writer. She struggled for
two years to develop a compelling story and for another two years
to find a publisher for her stories about ordinary, small-town
life, before she was signed by Lion Publishing, a small Christian
press. After Karon's books had won her an intensely devoted fan
base, her contract was sold to Viking/Putnam Publishing, a major
New York-based book company. When Karon was asked about the wide
appeal of the Mitford series, she told Betty Smartt Carter for
Christianity Today (September 1, 1997), "First of all, when
people pick up a Mitford book, they discover themselves, their
value system. Where else can people find their value system
represented in today's world--can you find it in Vogue magazine,
on Roseanne, watching Geraldo? No. What do you find on the
bestseller list? Murder and mayhem. But when people go to Mitford,
they go home. It's familiar, and it is consoling. And that's what
I work to give my readers, the sense of consolation and
hope."
Born Janice Meredith Wilson in 1937, Jan Karon was
raised with her younger sister, Brenda, by her maternal
grandparents on a farm in Lenoir, North Carolina. (Their
grandparents accepted that responsibility as the girls' mother,
Wanda Setzer, was very young at the time.) Karon was quoted on
bookbrowse.com as saying about that experience, "On the farm
there is time to muse and dream. I am endlessly grateful I was
reared in the country. As a young girl I couldn't wait to get off
that farm, to go to Hollywood or New York. But living in those
confined, bucolic circumstances was one of the best things that
ever happened to me." Karon knew at a very early age that she
wanted to be a writer. She wrote her first novel when she was only
10 years old. In some ways that experience has shaped Karon's
writing style; a writer for bookreporter.com quoted her as saying,
"The manuscript was written on Blue Horse notebook paper, and
was, for good reason, kept hidden from my sister. When she found
it, she discovered the one curse word I had, with pounding heart,
included in someone's speech. For Pete's sake, hadn't Rhett Butler
used that very same word and gotten away with it? After my
grandmother's exceedingly focused reproof, I've written books
without cussin' ever since." Also at 10, she won a
short-story contest organized by the local high school. Karon
dropped out of school in the eighth grade. (She has pointed out
that she thus reached the same level of schooling as the legendary
playwright George Bernard Shaw.) When she was 16 she gave birth to
a girl, Candace, and married the baby's father, whom she divorced
when she was 20.
Meanwhile, at 18, Karon began working as a
receptionist for a Raleigh, North Carolina, advertising agency.
She advanced in the company after leaving samples of her writing
on the desk of her boss, who eventually noticed her talent. Karon
went on to have a highly successful career in the field, winning
awards for the TV commercials she wrote for agencies in Raleigh,
New York, and San Francisco, California. In time she became the
creative vice president at McKinney, Silver & Rockett (now
McKinney & Silver), in Raleigh. While working there she shared
the prestigious Stephen Kelly Award, with which the Magazine
Publishers of America honors the year's best advertising in a
magazine.
All along, Karon kept alive the ambition she had
had as a child: to be a writer. At 50 she quit her job in
advertising and moved to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, to pursue
that goal. She told bookreporter.com, "I stepped out on faith
to follow my lifelong dream. . . . I made real sacrifices and took
big risks. But living, it seems to me, is largely about
risk." For two years she struggled to come up with an idea
she found sufficiently interesting to serve as the basis for a
book. In an on-line forum conducted by the Washington Post on
February 21, 2001, Karon told her fans about the inspiration for
the Mitford series: "I had a sort of mental vision one night
of a priest walking down a village street, that is all that came
to me. I was in bed and I was very anxious about the fact that I
had moved to the mountains to write a book, and in fact had no
book to write. There was something oddly intriguing about this
priest and I got up and went to the computer to see where he might
go. He went to a dog named Barnabas and they went to a boy named
Dooley. The story continued to unfold. I found that I wanted to
look at an entire village full of interesting characters, and the
best way to do this would be through the eyes of one person, whom
everyone trusted." Karon began publishing her story in weekly
installments in a local newspaper, which saw its circulation
double as a result. Many of Blowing Rock's residents approached
Karon to offer advice on the story (whose setting is not modeled
on the town). After two years Karon found a publisher, Lion
Publishing, and the novel At Home in Mitford (1994) came out.
That book has since been nominated three times
(1996, 1997, and 1998) for an ABBY (American Booksellers Book of
the Year Award), which honors titles that bookstore owners most
enjoy recommending to customers. In the opinion of a writer for
the Los Angeles Times (1999), as quoted by Aida Adermariam in the
London Guardian (October 10, 2002), "Karon depicts what may
be the most complete rendering of the American myth."
Although it was considered Christian literature, At Home in
Mitford became a rare crossover best-seller and was praised by
many of Karon's fans for richly describing a small, tightly knit,
and trusting village community. (Along with the praise came some
criticism that the town lacked ethnic diversity.) All seven books
in the Mitford series are inspired by Karon's belief in God; in
them, she has attempted to capture what she sees as the small
miracles of everyday life brought about by God's grace. At Home in
Mitford introduced some of the series' main characters, including
Father Tim and his faithful dog, Barnabas; Father Tim's unofficial
adopted son, Dooley Barlowe, who was abandoned by an alcoholic
mother; and Father Tim's neighbor and love interest, Cynthia
Coppersmith, who is a successful children's-book author. In the
series' second book, A Light in the Window, Father Tim is pursued
by an aggressive widow, Edith Mallory. These High, Green Hills
finds Father Tim marrying Cynthia (though the details of the
wedding were left out of the novel) and helping to set Dooley on
the road to maturity. Out to Canaan introduces more change, as
Father Tim prepares for retirement while the threat of commercial
development increases in Mitford with the election of a new mayor.
A New Song is the first novel in the series in which the action
moves away from Mitford, as Father Tim, now in retirement, takes
on a temporary position as a minister in the small oceanside town
of White Cap, North Carolina. In A Common Life: The Wedding Story,
Karon appeased her fans by returning to the story of Cynthia and
Father Tim's wedding. A Common Life topped Amazon.com's
best-seller list for two weeks before its publication day; it
debuted at number one on the Wall Street Journal's best-seller
list. In This Mountain brings Father Tim back to Mitford. In a
review of that book, Ben Steelman wrote for the Wilmington, North
Carolina, Star-News (September 1, 2001), "Mitford seems like
one of those places with no real problems. How many small North
Carolina towns, after all, have a downtown with a bookstore and an
Irish woolens shop? . . . To Ms. Karon's credit, though, she
steers In This Mountain into deeper waters. Several characters
must deal with serious illness and death; some, including Father
Tim, must pass through a long, dark night of the soul." As of
early 2003, eight million copies of the Mitford series books were
in print.
Karon recently located from her home in Blowing
Rock to a nationally registered, 18th-century farmhouse in
Virginia. She is writing a book about its restoration. She has
also published two Christmas-themed books based on the Mitford
series, The Mitford Snowmen (2001) and Esther's Gift (2002). In
addition, Karon has written two children's books, Miss Fannie's
Hat (1998) and Jeremy: The Tale of an Honest Bunny (2000), and
contributed to two cookbooks: A Southern Style Christmas (2000),
co-written by Lucinda Secrest McDowell, and From Storebought to
Homemade: Cook Up Easy, Fabulous Food in Minutes (2001),
co-written by Emyl Jenkins. Godlight: Father Tim's Favorite
Quotes, a compilation of Father Tim's favorite sayings, appeared
in 2002. Karon's daughter, Candace Freeland, who lives in Hawaii,
is a photographer specializing in wedding photos and family
portraits. -- L.A.S.
Suggested Reading: Atlantic Monthly p132+ Jan.
2002, with photos; (London) Guardian p6+ Oct. 12, 2002; People
p113+ Sep. 10, 2001, with photo; Washington Post IV p1+ May 12,
1998; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette VI p1 Aug. 22, 2002
Selected Books:
At Home in Mitford,1994; A Light in the Window, 1995; These High,
Green Hills,1996; Out to Canaan, 1997; Miss Fannie's Hat, 1998; A
New Song,1999; Jeremy: The Tale of An Honest Bunny, 2000; A
Southern Style Christmas, 2000; From Storebought to Homemade: Cook
Up Easy, Fabulous Food in Minutes, 2001; The Mitford Snowmen,
2001; A Common Life: The Wedding Story, 2001; Never Let it End:
Poems of a Life Long Love, 2001; In This Mountain, 2002; Esther's
Gift: A Mitford Christmas Story, 2002; Patches of Godlight: Father
Tim's Favorite Quotes, 2002
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