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Readers thrilled by opportunity to meet past Tale author
Oct. 23, 2007
Local News
By Ben Beagle
bbeagle@batavianews.com
Judy Sesceil of Akron learned about the "A Tale for Three Counties"
community reading project a couple of years ago from a co-worker.
She has read the most recent books and on Monday caught up with a Tale
author she had missed. Howard Frank Mosher visited Genesee, Orleans
and Wyoming counties as part of the 2004 program.
"I thought he was a great storyteller. I can't wait to read his
books," she said after Mosher's Monday morning talk and book signing
at Richmond Memorial Library.
Mosher, who returned to help announce the 2008 Tale selection, used
his updated slide show, "Where in the World is Kingdom County?,"
to show the places and people that have inspired his novels about a
fictional community of many unique characters in Northern Vermont. He
also talked about filmmaker Jay Craven's adaptations of three of his
novels and the Civil War novel, featuring more Kingdom County characters,
that he is finishing.
It was the humor of his latest novel, On Kingdom Mountain, especially
main character Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson, that brought Janis Colby
of Corfu to the library.
"I love to read, and love new things by different authors,"
said Colby, who counts James Patterson and John Grisham novels as frequent
reading choices.
Mosher chronicled his journey to Orleans and Irasburg, Vt., - "a
pretty rough-looking place to this day" - from the first teaching
jobs for him and his wife, to their return after a brief detour to Los
Angeles when Mosher was accepted into a master's writing program at
the University of California.
"I had not been there two days when I realized I had made the mistake
of my life. There was no place to catch a trout or talk to an old timer,"
said Mosher, who with his wife grew up in rural Central New York.
It was at a stop light at Hollywood and Vine that Mosher recalled a
telephone truck stopping alongside him and the driver, apparently seeing
the car's Vermont license plate, called out hurriedly, "I'm from
Vermont too; go back while you still can."
Upon returning, Mosher met three people who would color Kingdom County:
his first landlady, who saved the family farm by making moonshine during
Prohibition and later married the government agent once sent to arrest
her; crusty old logger Jake Blodgett who inspired many characters, and
wild and anarchistic but "Abe Lincoln honest" Marjorie Moore,
one of several women who inspired Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson.
"In some ways," said Mosher, the author of nine novels, "the
Northeast Kingdom of Vermont turned out to be my graduate school."
-- Back to 2008 Articles
Courtesy of Batavia Newspapers Corporation