For one weekend alone, hundreds of devoted readers gathered in Hudson, North Carolina, to celebrate Mitford, a fictional place with a real sense of community. Ian Caron, the 88-year-old Mitford author, has written 15 books about the imaginary mountain village.
When asked how to describe the town of Mitford, Caron responded that it was “a place where my readers can go and not be afraid. This is a place of refuge. This is a place where they can go and take a deep breath.”
The humanity of Caron's heroes has found loyal followers, thanks to whom her novels consistently appear on the bestseller list. But for some people, she is not a household name like other bestselling authors. When asked why, Caron replied: “I don’t really give you any rides. I'm just giving you a kind of float! Many people tell me that my books put them to sleep, and I take that as a huge compliment!”
Caron fans say these books are more than just page-turners. In the words of Nellie McMasters: “We live in such an unstable period, we are in such turmoil, that this is just a good, pleasant place.”
“And it’s not controversial,” Joellen Maurer said. “It’s just love your neighbor, know the people who live around you.”
When asked if she believed places like Mitford existed in America today, Phyllis Farringer replied, “Yes, where there is a religious community and people caring about each other, and I can see that.”
Jan Caron was raised by her grandmother Fanny in Hudson and attended elementary school there. Almost eight decades later she turned the site into the Mitford Museum.
She credits her first-grade teacher, Nan Downes, for encouraging her creativity. According to Caron, by the age of 10 she realized that she wanted to become a writer: “I stood in front of this very mirror and said: I am going to become a writer.”
How did she know? “I just knew,” Caron said. “I love to read. And so I wanted to give other people what I got from reading, which was a completely different world.”
At 14, Caron wanted to escape her world, so she got married, dropped out of school, and gave birth to her daughter, Candace, a year later. She got divorced at 18.
“A lot of them were very difficult because I became a single mother and had to raise her on my own when I hadn’t really been raised myself yet,” she said.
She worked in several jobs, including television. She was later fired and says this was her turning point: “It brought me to my knees; I’ve never been on my knees,” Caron said. “I was 42. I just fell: I don't know what to pray for. I'm just here and I need help and just change me.“
She became a successful advertising executive, but says she felt called to write more than just advertising. So she quit her job and began weaving her faith into her stories. She published her work for free in a local newspaper, eventually turning the stories into her first Mitford novel, At Home in Mitford, in 1994.
I asked, “I think when people think of your books and your work, they often think of comfort, they think maybe of purity, of Christianity.”
“I’m grateful to my Christian readers, very grateful,” Caron said. “But I write for a secular audience. God poured out his love on me, and you can’t say, well, I just can’t talk about it in my books.”
Her last job is in Mitford, “My favorite”, it's all about presence, aging and connection. Caron says it was one of the hardest things she's ever written – and comes after saying: she will never write another book about Mitford.
In 2008, she began a story set during Christmas, but it remained unfinished for over a decade. In 2021, her daughter Candace died of cancer. Caron was moved to write about her grief. The completed work, now a novel, is dedicated to her daughter.
“She was the sunshine of my life,” Caron said of Candace.
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I asked, “Have you ever talked to her while you’re sitting here writing?”
“All the time,” she replied. “And I know it sounds corny, but to me it’s true, right there she’ll say, ‘I hear you, Mom. It's okay, mom. Everything will be fine”.
“How did losing Candace change your life?”
“I’m less judgmental,” Caron responded. “I’m a little easier, even towards myself. And I've always been very strict with myself. I know we don't have eternity anymore, and that's what this book says. So what can we do with this time? Something better than what we're doing? Or even just something more fun? We don't have to be noble all the time.”
Jan Caron invites us to seek community and neighborly love, to find our own Mitford. “If you just get in your car and drive to America, I tell you, I can guarantee, I promise you, it’s there. You'll have to look for it. It will not come to you or sit on your doorstep. You have to go and get it, and it’s there to get it.”
READ REST: “My Beloved” by Jan Caron
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The story was produced by Robbin McFadden. Editor: Georgy Pozderek.
