For nearly a decade, Jan Karon's bestselling series about the "little town with the big heart" has delighted fans. They will find her trademark talents in full view in this concluding volume.

Light from Heaven
(Mitford Years)

by Jan Karon
Viking,
384 pp.; $26.95

Father Tim Kavanagh and his wife, Cynthia, are on a farm, housesitting for friends. Artist Cynthia is hard at work on a new calendar featuring Violet the cat, while Father Tim undertakes reviving Holy Trinity, a mostly abandoned mountain church. With their (now formally) adopted son Dooley firmly on the right path, the aging couple takes on a new challenge: Dooley's pool-shooting younger brother, Sammy. And the search continues almost to the closing pages for Dooley's long-missing sibling, Kenny.

Woven throughout the narrative are hymns, jokes, short sermons, mouth-watering food (and some not so mouth-watering, such as squirrel soup), and colorful mountain characters and dialect. Strong themes of faith proliferate.



Related Elsewhere:

Lauren Winner reviewed the book for our sister publication Books & Culture.

Light from Heaven is available from Amazon.com and other book retailers.

More information about Light from Heaven and the rest of the series is available from Mitfordbooks.com.

For book lovers, our 2005 CT book awards are available online, along with our book awards for 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, and 1997, as well as our Books of the Twentieth Century. For other coverage or reviews, see our Books archive and the weekly Books & Culture Corner.

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