BoomerGirl Diary

“Home to Holly Springs,” Jan Karon’s newest novel, was released in November 2007. It’s the first of the “Father Tim Novels.”

Fans of Jan Karon have enjoyed her series of novels about the town of Mitford, of which Father Timothy Kavanagh is a central character. In “Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader,” written in response to readers’ questions about the novels’ foods, Karon explained how the character of Father Tim came to be.

According to Karon, she was lying in bed one night when she had a mental image of a priest walking along a village street with a dog named Barnabas. She got up and started to write. Since then, the readers have followed Father Tim and Barnabas through several novels and have watched Father Tim deal with diabetes.

As this week’s novel begins, Father Tim is driving his red Mustang convertible, top down, to Holly Springs, Mississippi. Since Cynthia, Tim’s wife, is recovering from an injury, Barnabas is his traveling companion.

Holly Springs is Father Tim’s boyhood home. It has been 38 years and four months since Father Tim left there. Then, two weeks ago, he received a note written on lined paper torn from a pad. “Come home” is all the note said. The note was unsigned, and there was no return address.

Father Tim doesn’t know what to expect when he gets there. So many unanswered questions, secrets and unresolved issues remained when his mother died. Father Tim vowed never to return.

For example, Father Tim never knew what became of Tommy Noles, the “forbidden friend” that he played with on the sly. And what happened to Peggy, the young Negro woman who helped Father Tim’s mother in the house? She was a second mother to Tim. One day, she just disappeared.

Then there was the Martin Houck affair. One day while his father was at work, and he and Houck, a cotton broker, had some kind of altercation and Houck ended up at the bottom of the stairs. Houck was confined to a wheelchair after that.

Houck claimed that Matthew Kavanagh had pushed him, but at the trial Kavanagh was found innocent. Neither Tim nor his mother was convinced that his father was innocent, however. He was a man with a rageful temper.

And there were still more secrets.

When Tim’s father drives into town, he’s surprised that his father’s office, the bank, Tyson Drug and Bookes Hardware are still there. His home at Whitefield is still there, too.

Though it’s being restored, Father Tim gets to spend a night in his old room.

Two invitations from former childhood friends are left at downtown stores for Father Tim. Jim Houck, son of Martin Houck, follows him to the cemetery. And then Tim gets a note from Henry Winchester.

Henry will be driving a blue Buick. That’s how Tim will know him when they meet out in the country, some 15 miles. Henry will take Father Tim to meet the person who sent the unsigned note.

There’s a big surprise at the end of this novel. It’s superb — just like Jan Karon’s other novels.