The place is northern Vermont, in the magical and remote area of Kingdom County. The hero is young Morgan Kinneson, 17 years old, owner of a good heart and a fine hunter's eye.
See a Problem?
The Kinneson family has for some time been involved in the Underground Railroad, the last link for runaway slaves before they reach the safety of Canada. Morgan is shepherding an elderly black man, Jesse, up to the border. They are scheduled to spend the night at the Kinneson sugar camp, where maples are tapped for sap. In the gathering dusk, Morgan spots the tracks of a moose that could feed his family for an entire year.
- Snow White And The Seven Samurai.
- .
- .
He ducks out of camp for a few minutes to track it, and when he returns, Jesse is dead. Jesse's killers are spooky indeed. Just a few weeks before, Morgan's aunt Mahitabel, who's fond of remarking, "Laughter besmirches the creation.
Walking to Gatlinburg
I detest laughter," read aloud a newspaper item about the escape from prison of five vile war criminals rumored to be -- along with their more conventional transgressions -- staunch anti-abolitionists. They include "a slave killer, a child murderer, an unfrocked minister, and a disbarred army doctor who, so far from healing the wounded soldiers under his care, had practiced vivisection upon them. Morgan's older brother, Pilgrim, a doctor in the Union Army, has been declared missing after the Battle of Gettysburg, but Morgan is convinced his brother is alive.
- One Wicked Naked Lady!
- Last Laugh Limited (Recycling Jimmy Book 2).
- !
- Instant Firebug Starter!
- Love is Blind.
Morgan has been planning a trip south to find him, but now the task turns into a double one: He must also find those responsible for Jesse's death. One dastardly villain remains unmentioned by the newspaper, a monster named Ludi Too, who plays a homemade zither to charm his victims and decorates his body with a still-rank bearskin, the bear's head draped fetchingly over his own. The plot is further thickened by the presence of hand-carved runic letters or characters, which are said to derive from figures that old Norse explorers carved into ancient Vermont stone outcroppings.
These runes have evidently been co-opted as markers by those running the Underground Railroad.
Walking to Gatlinburg by Howard Frank Mosher
Morgan will encounter many picturesque characters on his fateful walk to Gettysburg -- and beyond, to Gatlinburg, Tenn. He meets an astonishingly articulate, disemboweled Gypsy recently assaulted by the vivisectionist and somehow still alive and his elephant, which weeps copiously at his owner's injuries and turns out to be a great help in towing canal boats. Morgan makes friends with a little girl who wears a shift made largely of goose down and feathers. 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. A captivating story, and one that cries for a sequel. Also by Howard Frank Mosher. See all books by Howard Frank Mosher.
‘Walking to Gatlinburg’: Close calls and quirky characters along the Underground Railroad
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