Walking to Gatlinburg - by Howard Frank Mosher (Paperback)

About the Book

A stunning and lyrical Civil War novel, "Walking to Gatlinburg" is a story of brotherhood and survival, action and adventure, in an unforgettable and mythic trek into an American heart of darkness as a boy searches for the brother he's lost.

Book Synopsis

"A Civil War odyssey in the tradition of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and Robert Olmstead's Coal Black Horse, Mosher's latest, about a Vermont teenager's harrowing journey south to find his missing-in-action brother, is old-fashioned in the best sense of the word....The story of Morgan's rite-of-passage through an American arcadia despoiled by war and slavery is an engrossing tale with mass appeal." -Publisher's Weekly

Morgan Kinneson is both hunter and hunted. The sharp-shooting 17-year-old from Kingdom County, Vermont, is determined to track down his brother Pilgrim, a doctor who has gone missing from the Union Army. But first Morgan must elude a group of murderous escaped convicts in pursuit of a mysterious stone that has fallen into his possession.

It's 1864, and the country is in the grip of the bloodiest war in American history. Meanwhile, the Kinneson family has been quietly conducting passengers on the Underground Railroad from Vermont to the Canadian border. One snowy afternoon Morgan leaves an elderly fugitive named Jesse Moses in a mountainside cabin for a few hours so that he can track a moose to feed his family. In his absence, Jesse is murdered, and thus begins Morgan's unforgettable trek south through an apocalyptic landscape of war and mayhem.

Along the way, Morgan encounters a fantastical array of characters, including a weeping elephant, a pacifist gunsmith, a woman who lives in a tree, a blind cobbler, and a beautiful and intriguing slave girl named Slidell who is the key to unlocking the mystery of the secret stone. At the same time, he wrestles with the choices that will ultimately define him - how to reconcile the laws of nature with religious faith, how to temper justice with mercy. Magical and wonderfully strange, Walking to Gatlinburg is both a thriller of the highest order and a heartbreaking odyssey into the heart of American darkness.

Review Quotes

Praise for Walking to Gatlinburg

"Mosher is a rare storyteller, able to both instruct and entertain, and he brings all his talents to this unforgettable and unique novel." -BookPage

"A Civil War odyssey in the tradition of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and Robert Olmstead's Coal Black Horse, Mosher's latest, about a Vermont teenager's harrowing journey south to find his missing-in-action brother, is old-fashioned in the best sense of the word....The story of Morgan's rite-of-passage through an American arcadia despoiled by war and slavery is an engrossing tale with mass appeal." -Publisher's Weekly

"We are in the hands of a skilled storyteller, and every word matters. A captivating story, and one that cries for a sequel." -Kirkus, starred review

"[A] haunting and hallucinatory novel....Historical realism this isn't but it is a violent, often puzzling picaresque with an invigorating take on the Underground Railroad and an unsettling vision of an America despoiled by the War between the States." -Booklist

Praise for Howard Frank Mosher

"Mosher is an old-fashioned writer, a storyteller of the first order; he has written a page-turner in the best sense of the word." -Boston Globe

"A combination of Ernest Hemingway, Henry David Thoreau, and Jim Harrison." -Los Angeles Times

"Mosher calls to mind the best of Mark Twain - mischievous, touching, and very funny." -Carl Hiaasen

"Rollicking, boisterous, sprawling, and highly entertaining." -Harper's Magazine

"Revives the tall tale with remarkable grace and intelligence ... delightful." -Washington Post

"Mosher is a gifted storyteller with a solid sense of place and history." -Cleveland Plain Dealer

"One of our very best writers ... Mosher offers us a landscape, both natural and human, worth knowing, worth believing in." -Richard Russo

About the Author

HOWARD FRANK MOSHER was the author of thirteen previous books of fiction and nonfiction, including God's Kingdom. He received Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, the New England Book Award, and the 2011 New England Independent Booksellers Association's President's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. In January 2017, Mosher passed away at the age of seventy-four in Vermont.