This letter is just one of many in the archive that reveal the difficulty of finding a home for Karon’s unusual work among major publishers. (Photographs by Kim Goss from issues of the newspaper held by the Blowing Rock Historical Society) An Artful Rejection
The first appearance of Mitford on page 13 of The Blowing Rocket, 6 April 1990. We have not been able to track down the original article that inspired Karon to write this piece.
Its pastoral tone and message foreshadow the fundamental concerns of the Mitford books. In it, Karon narrates her process of becoming a Christian after years living adrift, and the relationship between that process and her final return home to the South after three years living in Berkeley, California. This remarkable letter is a capsule spiritual autobiography, written almost a decade before Karon began publishing the Mitford stories. Jan Karon’s Christian faith is indivisible from her work as a writer, but this was not always the case. The archive reveals that some readers were offended by Karon’s decision to confront racism in that book, while others were grateful for the move. Critics have noted that Karon’s books do not grapple with race or racism in the South until “Home to Holly Springs” (2012), which is set in Mississippi and features Father Tim Kavanagh discovering he has a Black half-brother. Twenty-three-year-old Jan Karon (then Jan Orth), participating in one of the first civil rights protests in Charlotte, against segregated lunch counters, 1960 (Box 86)Īrtifacts showing Karon’s early-adult political activism present a counterpoint to the pointedly apolitical Mitford novels.
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