A New Song by Jan Karon


My 2 cents:

It's January, temperatures plummeted to 17 degrees this weekend (in North Carolina!), and I want to go to the beach. January and February are bleak months for me, and I must not be the only one. No wonder Sports Illustrated publishes their annual swimsuit issue in February. I got my swimsuit issue today from Lands' End.

If I can't be at the beach to hear the waves and the gulls, I can read about it, which is why I pulled an old favorite off the library shelf this weekend and read it again. A New Song, by Jan Karon, first published in 1999, is the fifth book in her much-loved Mitford series.

A New Song takes Father Tim Kavanagh and wife, Cynthia, to a year-long interim pastorate on Whitecap Island, somewhere off the coast of North Carolina or Virginia. Accessible by a small bridge (when it's not out), and otherwise by ferry, the island interim proves both challenging (terrible storm, infidelity, depression, theft, two mysterious neighbors); and exhilarating (ocean sunsets, bike rides on beach roads, new friendships, a borrowed three-year-old boy, reconciliations, gifts, and God's work at St. John's in the Grove).

Reading it again blew an island breeze through my soul (and now I'm longing for the coast more than ever).



Length: 400 pages

Worth Your Time? Yes, the entire series is worth your time, if you haven't read it yet, or simply want to pick it up like an old friend, and read it again. Also, you might like Jan Karon's Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader, a story/cookbook for staunch Mitford fans, which includes jokes from Uncle Billy, stories from Miss Sadie, and recipes for Esther Bolick's Orange Marmalade Cake, and Cynthia's Heavenly Tea. I sent a copy recently to a friend, who fell off a chair and broke her leg (but that's another story … )

Bonus: Thanks so much to my friends at Scotland County Memorial Library, who faithfully go the extra mile to assist and support me, and keep me in books up to my eyebrows! :) 

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