How Does She Do This?

   Writing about reading, AGAIN...

   As most of you will remember, Mayre and I are reading, well, I am reading aloud, and she is listening, or sleeping, as the situation develops, my reading voice seems to do that to people, but she does get some good naps in, and sometimes I sneak off to another part of the condo to finish up on other things.

   But back to what we have been reading, and here I will refresh some memories out there, The Mitford books, by author Jan Karon. We had read most of the series back when they first came out in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ms. Karan started publishing the series in 1994, and the original first nine volumes hit the market from 1994 till 2005.

   What got us started this time around was the publication of Come Rain or Come Shine, which was another Mitford book put out in 2015. As we went through this later book, we knew most of the characters from the earlier writings, but we had missed a lot of the details that made up the background for the latest novel.

   So, we went back to book one and began again, reading all the way through book nine, which appears to have been the last projected book in the Mitford series.

   Karon's next two books were labeled "The Father Tim Series", and included Home To Holly Springs (2007) and In The Company of Others (2010). We decided to continue our oral readings with these, so we are on the Holly Springs one now.

   As we are reading through Holly Springs, I was stuck with the amount of detail into the early life of Father Tim, which is hinted at in the earlier Mitford books, but fleshed out in great detail here. The stories of how people and situations came about, and their effect on the life of Father Tim Kavanagh make the older books richer in meaning,

   But here is the question that seems to boggle my mind: How much of the detail presented in Holly Springs was present in the author's mind when the series began? Here is a book that gives the background of the life of the main character, whose fictional life began at least 13 years previously.

   The author has done a great job of weaving this background through the first nine books, giving snippets of information and hints as to situations and people, without telling the full story. except what is needed for that  particular book's story line.

   Then she writes Holly Springs and fleshes out the complete story. How does she do that? Does she develop the main character, and then make up situations in an earlier life that fit the current narrative?

   Does she have it all in mind the whole way through?

   I have spent the entire morning looking for a way to ask her those questions, but without success. There must be a way...I'll keep searching.

   After we finish our current reading, we will go on to Company of Others which involves a trip to Ireland, land of the Kavanagh line, and, I'm sure we will discover further information on how Father Tim became Father Tim.

   And now I see that there are four more Mitford books, that carry on the stories of all these Mitford people and their beloved priest, the last one published in 2017. How many more does Karon's mind contain?

   Well, at least, we have good material to read for a few more days, months, years....and that is a real good thing.

   You may note that the photo at the top has no relevance in this post, at least not outwardly. I took it the other night at sunset, and, in my mind, entitled it Peace...

   I like it.

   And, I like the books, a lot...