Daniel Mason burrows into rural lore in ‘Country People’

By Heller McAlpin

“Country People,” Daniel Mason’s first novel set in contemporary times, will come as something of a surprise for fans of his historical fiction – including, most recently, his masterful “North Woods.”

But achievements like “North Woods” – which offered a fresh view of American history reflected in the lives of the successive inhabitants of a house in the Massachusetts woods over the past four centuries – do not come along every day. With “Country People,” Mason has opted for something lighter, a romp that unfolds over a single academic year and playfully explores the power of storytelling, family, and community.

“Country People” involves a couple of urban academics who move from northern California to rural Vermont with their two school-age children and Italian-bred, truffle-hunting dog when the wife accepts a prestigious one-year visiting professorship in the English department of a local college. Kate Petrosian fervently believes that liberal arts in general and John Milton and William Blake in particular have much wisdom to offer students – even in an era when the university “had abandoned itself so completely to the promises of technology that her students studying biology (and not, say, bioengineering) were considered crazy, wasteful hippies.” Kate’s hope is that, away from his obligations as a teaching assistant, her husband, Miles Krzelewski, will finally finish his dissertation on Russian folklore, which is 14 years overdue because he keeps changing topics. Read the full review at the Christian Science Monitor.