To Be Where You Are

New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2017. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Candace Freeland (author photograph). [12], 450, [4] pages. Illustrated endpapers. Signed copy sticker on front of DJ. Signed by the author, Jan Karon, on the front free endpaper. This is one of Mitford series of novels. The author is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of fourteen novels in the Mitford series, featuring Episcopal priest Father Tim Kavanagh. She has authored twelve other books, as well as several titles for children. Jan Karon is an American novelist who writes for both adults and young readers. She is the author of the New York Times-bestselling Mitford novels, featuring Father Timothy Kavanagh, an Episcopal priest, and the fictional village of Mitford. Her most recent Mitford novel, To Be Where You Are, was released in September 2017. She has been designated a lay Canon for the Arts in the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy (Illinois) by Keith Ackerman, Episcopal Bishop of Quincy,[= and in May 2000 she was awarded the Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa by Nashotah House, a theological seminary in Nashotah Wisconsin. ["More from Mitford" Volume 4, Number 10, Fall 2000.] In 2015, she was awarded the Library of Virginia's Literary Lifetime Achievement Award. Her original papers to date are archived in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. In 1994, Karon placed her work with a small publisher, which brought out a volume titled At Home in Mitford. Karon employed her marketing skills to promote her book. But the publisher offered limited distribution and little marketing muscle of its own. Two more Mitford novels appeared. Sales remained modest. Then Karon's friend Mary Richardson, mother of Carolina Panthers' owner Jerry Richardson, showed At Home in Mitford to Nancy Olson, owner of Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh. Olson felt there was a large audience looking for clean, well-written fiction. She sent Karon's book to a New York agent friend, who got it to Carolyn Carlson, an editor at Viking Penguin. By the late 1990s, Karon's books were New York Times bestsellers. #1 New York Times-bestselling author Jan Karon returns with the fourteenth novel in the beloved Mitford series, featuring three generations of Kavanaghs. Wounds heal, bonds grow stronger, and celebrations continue...Welcome back to beloved Mitford. After twelve years of wrestling with the conflicts of retirement, Father Tim Kavanagh realizes he doesn't need a steady job to prove himself. Then he's given one. As for what it proves, heaven only knows. Millions of Karon fans will be thrilled that it's life as usual in the wildly popular Mitford series: A beloved town character lands a front-page obituary, but who was it, exactly, who died? And what about the former mayor, born the year Lindbergh landed in Paris, who's still running for office? All this, of course, is but a feather on the wind compared to Muse editor J.C. Hogan's desperate attempts to find a cure for his marital woes. Will it be high-def TV or his pork-chop marinade? In fiction, as in real life, there are no guarantees. Twenty minutes from Mitford at Meadowgate Farm, newlyweds Dooley and Lace Kavanagh face a crisis that devastates their bank account and impacts their family vet practice. But there is still a lot to celebrate, as their adopted son, Jack, looks forward to the most important day of his life--with great cooking, country music, and lots of people who love him. Happily, it will also be a day when the terrible wound in Dooley's biological family begins to heal because of a game--let's just call it a miracle--that breaks all the rules. In To Be Where You Are, Jan Karon weaves together the richly comic and compelling lives of two Kavanagh families, and a cast of characters that readers around the world now love like kin.