Out to Canaan (The Mitford Years, Book 4)
by Jan Karon

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• ISBN13: 9780140265682
• Condition: New
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Book Reviews of Out to Canaan (The Mitford Years, Book 4)

Book Review: Shockingly superficial and naive
Summary: 1 Stars

This is apparently a continuation of a series of books about the little town of Mitford, North Carolina. Mitford supposedly has a population of only a thousand, although there are many more businesses and churches than a town of that size would realistically have.

The main character is the longtime rector of the Episcopal Church in Mitford, who is valiantly trying to solve the problems of at least a dozen people. Those attempts are complicated by his own personal and family problems, as well as some political divisions within the town.

Without exception, every attempt to solve every problem is successful. The rector confidently places his trust in the Lord, and remarkable coincidences save the day in every case.

The naiveté of this book is breathtaking. Karon seems to believe that good intentions will always be rewarded, whether you are trying to reform an alcoholic, raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for your church, teach a teenager how to drive, or build a marriage between two people who remained single well into their fifties. Has Karon's life really been like that, or has she been sleepwalking since birth? The rector doesn't even have to break a sweat to solve every problem and rescue every soul in town. No one ever resents his attempts to intrude into their lives. He never has to deal with the often-agonizing issue of where to draw the line between supporting people and teaching them to support themselves.

The religious aspect of the book is not heavy-handed, but the preposterous naiveté of the author's viewpoint applies to religion as well. At one point the rector assures one of his church members that the Lord would not allow a cholera relief project to fail since it's too righteous and important a cause. Now, if relieving cholera is so important to the Lord that He will intervene in human affairs to assure the success of the project, one might wonder why He didn't intervene to prevent the epidemic in the first place. But neither our good rector nor the author Karon seem to have allowed such faithless ideas to enter their heads. Again and again, ridiculously unlikely coincidences, attributed to divine intervention, occur at the very last minute to save the day. In Karon's theology, God seems to spend all His time cleaning up after His own oversights.

In order to inject some "realism" into the story, Karon provides a squabble between the rector and his wife - a squabble so minor that no real live married couple would even remember it the next day - and inflates it into a titanic crisis.

The characters in the book are consistently and uniformly superficial and one-dimensional. No one ever deeply questions his/her own values, no one feels unloved or unappreciated. No one looks back on his/her life and wonders whether it was truly worth it. There are two teenagers in the book, and neither encounters the emotional crises or shattered self-esteem that are a virtually universal part of everyone's adolescence. There are two "bad guys", but they are kept permanently in the background, and, I believe, neither ever speaks a word. And needless to say, their inner motivations are never explored - presumably because Karon is unaware that human beings ever HAVE inner motivations.

A previous reviewer mentioned that there is a good mystery story in this book. Here's the mystery: a little girl is missing, having been taken somewhere, previously, by a cousin. The rector's secretary looks up the cousin's name on the Internet, and discovers that he is living in Florida. The rector and his wife drive down and get the little girl and the cousin (who is nearly dead from gangrene - and the rector saves the day again). That's the "mystery". The whole thing.

There is nothing wrong with idealism. We can all aspire to create our own little Mitfords in our lives, and to devote as much time as possible to helping others. The reason this book is so astoundingly bad is not because it is idealistic. It is bad because anyone who tries to live a life like the ones portrayed in this book, and expects to have anything remotely approaching the results this rector achieves, will experience bitter disillusionment, followed by terminal cynicism.

The book, very simply, is a lie.

Summary of Out to Canaan (The Mitford Years, Book 4)

Peopled with the lovable cast of characters familiar to so many, and peppered with plenty of new and colorful personalities, Out to Canaan is filled to the brim with the mysteries and miracles that make everyday life worth living, and that make Mitford one of the most memorable small towns in recent literature.

Longtime mayor Esther Cunningham, revered for preserving the traditions of the town, finds a formidable foe in Mack Stroupe, a free-spending industrialist who stands for the two most reviled words in Mitford: change and development. If that isn't enough, a suspicious company called "Miami Development" wants to buy Sadie Baxter's home--a Mitford landmark--and turn it into a hoity-toity spa. Father Tim has his hands full again with Dooley, his foster child who is back from prep school for the summer. The good rector continues to doctor Dooley's troubled past by locating his siblings, Poohbaw and Jessie, and finding their alcoholic mother, Pauline, work. The plethora of intricately woven, cozy vignettes makes Out to Canaan a potpie of warm, country reading. --Rebekah Warren

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