A Stranger in the Kingdom - by Howard Frank Mosher (Paperback)

About the Book

Howard Frank Mosher has earned both critical acclaim and a wide readership for his vivid historical portraits of northern New England residents in his fictional Kingdom County, Vermont. A Stranger in the Kingdom tells the unforgettable story of a brutal murder in a small town and the devastating events that follow. The town's new preacher, a black man, finds himself on trial more for who he is than for what he might have done in this powerful drama of passion, prejudice, and innocence suddenly lost . . . and perhaps found again.

Book Synopsis

This novel of murder and its aftermath in a small Vermont town in the 1950s is "reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird...Absorbing" (New York Times).

In Kingdom County, Vermont, the town's new Presbyterian minister is a black man, an unsettling fact for some of the locals. When a French-Canadian woman takes refuge in his parsonage--and is subsequently murdered--suspicion immediately falls on the clergyman. While his thirteen-year-old son struggles in the shadow of the town's accusations, and his older son, a lawyer, fights to defend him, a father finds himself on trial more for who he is than for what he might have done.

"Set in northern Vermont in 1952, Mosher's tale of racism and murder is powerful, viscerally affecting and totally contemporary in its exposure of deep-seated prejudice and intolerance... [A] big, old-fashioned novel."--Publishers Weekly

"A real mystery in the best and truest sense."--Lee Smith, New York Times Book Review

A Winner of the New England Book Award