To this point in a literary career that spans nearly a quarter century, Daniel Mason principally has been known for beautifully crafted historical novels like THE PIANO TUNER and NORTH WOODS. In that sense, his latest book, COUNTRY PEOPLE, marks a considerable departure. What remains consistent in this charming, wry domestic comedy is Mason's talent for creating memorable and deeply sympathetic characters and the eloquent prose that contributes to a consistently enjoyable reading experience.

COUNTRY PEOPLE focuses on the lives of Miles Krzelewski and Kate Petrosian, married academics who migrate from the Bay Area to the small town of Greensbury, Vermont, when Kate, a rising Milton and Blake scholar, is offered a visiting professorship in the English Department of a college there. The job includes rent-free accommodations in exchange for house-sitting the residence of a professor on leave. Miles and Kate are accompanied by their two children --- Wesley, a 12-year-old polymath fond of drawing on his store of arcane knowledge to correct adults' factual errors, and his sister Olive, an artistic, sensitive nine-year-old --- and their adventure-loving Lagotto Romagnolo dog, Giuseppe.

In contrast to his wife's impressive professional status, in 14 years, Miles has yet to finish a first draft of a Ph.D. dissertation that has undergone numerous changes of subject but that now focuses on Russian folktales, a perspective he hopes will be enriched by his exposure to rural life in Southern Vermont.

"...[a] charming, wry domestic comedy... What's most distinctive about COUNTRY PEOPLE is the generosity of its spirit, embodied primarily in its view of the flawed, but fundamentally decent, personage of Miles and the other inhabitants of Greensbury."

But as Kate embarks on her academic duties, Miles does everything except apply himself to work on his dissertation. He samples a variety of pursuits that include scything with Andrei Abramov, an unemployed biochemist, and skiing under the tutelage of Bjorn Nordqvist, a former Norwegian Olympian and military hero. He meets the Rat Man of Vermont, an exterminator who gives him the bad news about an implacable infestation of rodents at their home, and Kayleigh Snow, Olivia's pregnant teacher, possessed of a “political worldview that included Southern Vermont secessionism, anticorporate environmentalism, postapocalyptic survivalism, and a long-standing family beef with Massachusetts.”

The work of Kate's colleague, sociologist Miranda Kim, adds more levity, in the form of the titles of her academic publications that include Can-Throwing Behaviors of Rural American Males. Mason seasons this comic mix with periodic excerpts from a quirky call-in show, “The Miscellaneous Minute,” offering a few lighthearted moments that seem to exist primarily as the setup for a concluding joke.

Impressively, Mason succeeds in retaining his readers' engagement through the novel's closely and affectionately observed but largely uneventful first half. Along with prose that glides along with a sense of effortlessness, much of that has to do with the oddly appealing character he has created in Miles, a “slight disappointment” (later “Slight Disappointment”), a “forty-five-year-old man still stuck in his coming-of-age story.” Miles is a devoted father, fond of sharing fanciful bedtime stories with his children, and a loving husband to Kate, whose longtime multiple sclerosis is in remission and who views Miles' lack of career progress with a near saintly detachment. 

It isn't until Miles injures his knee in a skiing accident and ends up in the ER in the midst of a blizzard that the story begins to take flight. There he meets Reginald, aka “Bentley” (after a real-life Vermont snowflake photographer whose spirit he claims inhabits him), a 300-pound Black man who drives a converted ambulance filled with library card catalogues documenting his work on a project he's given various titles that include “Inventory of Wrong Ideas” and “Registry of Unsubstantiated Nonsense.” Given the scope of the delusions he seeks to combat, it seems like a ceaseless task. But that's only the beginning of the delights of the novel’s second act.

Their encounter results in Miles' introduction to the Southern Vermont Chapter of the Jeremiah Wylkes Society. It's a secretive organization devoted to dissecting the work of the eponymous character who purportedly discovered in the early 19th century a phantasmagoric underground world of “silver forests, and towers rising to the clouds, and thousands of warriors gathered by the fluttering pennants of their battalions” in one of the caves scattered throughout the region. 

The Society's members meet periodically to discuss papers and other investigative materials they hope will bring them closer to understanding the mystery of Wylkes' claimed discovery. Are they serious investigators of a legitimate phenomenon or kooks in the grip of a mass delusion? Mason wisely doesn't tilt the balance in favor of either answer.

As Miles becomes more deeply absorbed in the Society's world, there's also a terrifying episode involving a missing child, along with his suspicion of infidelity on Kate's part and his own temptation by a much younger woman named Nausicaä Torres-Lakeman, with whom he co-directs a unique performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream presented by Olive's third-grade class. Amid this turmoil, Mason delivers an emotionally satisfying, but by no means inevitable, resolution. 

Mason's comic sensibility isn't the kind that triggers belly laughs. It partakes of a softer quality that evokes wry smiles and nods of recognition. What's most distinctive about COUNTRY PEOPLE is the generosity of its spirit, embodied primarily in its view of the flawed, but fundamentally decent, personage of Miles and the other inhabitants of Greensbury. There are no villains here. Instead, in a time when we're conditioned to view each other with suspicion at best and contempt at worst, Mason gently points the way to a different orientation, built around an ethos of mutual understanding and tolerance. For all their manifest oddities, he suggests, Miles and his fellow Vermonters seem to be headed, if at times haltingly, in the right direction. We have the pleasure of riding along with them.