Vermont author Howard Mosher discusses his new book and film

In 1976, Vermont author Howard Frank Mosher and his wife traveled to Montreal to catch a live performance by singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson. Although Kristofferson was three hours late, he put on a memorable show. He regaled the audience with a story of how, years earlier, he had landed a helicopter in Johnny Cash’s backyard and hand-delivered the lyrics to a new song. Cash was irate, but he accepted the lyrics, and Kristofferson’s determination paid off.

At the time of the concert, Mosher was teaching in Vermont and struggling to find time to complete his latest novel, “Disappearances.” It was Kristofferson’s anecdote, he said, that inspired him to finish the book at all costs.

“My wife and I were inspired by that story, and when we got back from Montreal, she said, ‘You have to write this novel, and if it means selling our house and moving into a little apartment, whatever it means, we just have to do it,’” Mosher recalled. They did sell the house, and Mosher eventually finished the novel. At the time, he never imagined that more than 30 years later, Kristofferson would play the role of the book’s lead character on the big screen. 

Director Jay Craven presented the film version of “Disappearances” at Portsmouth Public Library on Aug. 21. Two days later, Mosher came to town to promote his new book, “On Kingdom Mountain,” at RiverRun Bookstore. He spoke to The Wire prior to that appearance to discuss the new film and the new novel.  

Mosher lives in Irasburg, Vt., a small northern town surrounded by mountains and farmland. It was during a stroll across the hillside that the idea behind “On Kingdom Mountain” struck him.

“I was walking on the mountain across the road from our house in northern Vermont, where I like to go to hike and cross-country ski, and although the mountain is still quite wild and undeveloped, an image flashed through my mind of the side of the mountain covered with housing tracts and Wal-Marts and McDonald’s,” he said. “It was a horrible specter.” 

Set in northern Vermont in 1930, “On Kingdom Mountain” tells the story of Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson, a strong-minded and outspoken ex-schoolteacher, woodcarver, hunter, fisher and lover of literature who lives alone on an inherited tract of land that includes most of Kingdom Mountain. The middle-aged spinster’s wealthy cousin, Eben Kinneson, plans to build a connector road running through the mountains to Canada, but Jane does not intend to let anyone disturb her pristine mountain or its tasty blueback char.

Woven into the plot is another adventure involving a mythical treasure supposedly hidden somewhere on Kingdom Mountain by Confederate bank robbers during the Civil War. (Mosher based the incident on a real-life robbery in which 20 Confederate raiders drove over the border from Canada and relieved a northern Vermont bank of $100,000.) Henry Satterfield, an eccentric stunt pilot who unexpectedly crash-lands on the mountain and shacks up in Jane’s house, is determined to find the boodle with the aid of an esoteric riddle left by his late grandfather. Sparks begin to fly as Henry vows to help Jane defend the mountain, and Jane promises to assist Henry in his treasure hunt.

Although set during the onset of the Great Depression, “On Kingdom Mountain” delves into topics that remain highly relevant in the 21st century. Communities across New England and the United States continue to face the challenge of balancing land conservation with development pressures. When Mosher and his wife first moved to Vermont more than four decades ago, they found themselves in a small farm town that had not changed much since the 1930s.

“In the 1960s, there were still a fair number of little farms in the hills around our town without electricity, without running water—places that derived their income from maybe 12 milking cows and a maple sugaring operation,” Mosher said.
Although much of the land is still used for agricultural purposes, the number of farms in Orleans County has dropped from something like 770 in the 1960s to fewer than 70 today, Mosher said. He has also seen other Vermont communities, such as Stowe, Killington and Burlington, experience immense development because of ski resorts and colleges. Irasburg has remained comparatively untainted, but subtle development has had an impact on the terrain and its wildlife. “The trout fishing just isn’t nearly as good as it was 43 years ago when we moved to the area, because logging roads have driven into the more remote sections of the trout streams, and in some cases there’s been quite a lot of damage done to the woods as a result,” Mosher said.

The author, who has now written 11 books, modeled the character of Miss Jane after his Great Aunt Jane, a strong-willed woman who served as a pillar of the Mosher family. He also mixed in elements of a former landlady who illegally ran moonshine during the Great Depression.

“For some reason, I found myself asking the question, ‘What if? What if a woman like my great aunt owned a mountain like this mountain across the road from our house, and the mountain were in danger of being developed?’ That was the genesis for my story,” Mosher said.

It took him five years to complete the 288-page book, fine-tuning a rural 1930s New England vernacular and unwinding a tale that would make Mark Twain proud. Mosher is in the midst of a six-month, 100-city promotional tour in support of the new book. He recently completed an eight-week national leg of the tour, driving to cities and towns across the country in the hopes of expanding his readership beyond New England.

Mosher believes his novel carries an important message. In 2007, the world could use a few more Jane Kinnesons, he said. “I would love to send Miss Jane down to the White House for about a day and see if she couldn’t straighten things out,” Mosher said with a laugh. “I think we do need to preserve our wild places, and it would be just devastating to me, and I think to just about everybody who lives in our town, to see that mountain developed. That’s where I taught our kids to hunt and to fish and to cross-country ski, and where my wife and I go to pick blackberries and blueberries.”

Mosher would like to see “On Kingdom Mountain” made into a movie one day, and the book has already made the rounds in Hollywood without much excitement, he said. In the meantime, however, he has enjoyed watching fellow Vermonter Jay Craven transform “Disappearances” into a full-length film.

Books do not always translate well into movies, and Craven warned Mosher ahead of time that the film might not turn out the way its author envisioned it. “At the beginning of the process, Jay Craven explained to me that the movie was going to be different from the book, and in some ways quite strikingly different,” Mosher said. “I’m glad he explained that to me at the beginning, because I’ve been able to see the book as one entity and the movie as another entity from the very start.”

Like “On Kingdom Mountain,” “Disappearances” is set in northern Vermont in the early 1930s. Kristofferson plays Quebec Bill, a struggling farmer who resorts to running whiskey to save his cattle herd. The risky occupation leads to a wild venture into Canada with his teenaged son, Wild Bill.

After being filtered through Craven’s directive lens, as well as the interpretive quirks of the actors, some of Mosher’s characters underwent significant changes in the transition from book to film. But, he said, Craven made a point of remaining close to the spirit of the characters, and Mosher enjoyed watching actors like Kristofferson and William Sanderson (HBO’s “Deadwood”) recreate the story onscreen.

Although the film version of “Disappearances” lacked some of the in-depth family histories Mosher worked hard to outline in the book, he admits that film has some advantages over literature. The big screen heightens the visual and auditory experience for audiences, allowing them to see the characters and hear the lines. Film is also a more lucrative industry—in some of Mosher and Craven’s joint events, the director sold about three times as many copies of the film as Mosher did of the book, the author said.

Mosher has nearly completed a first draft of yet another novel, although he does not expect it to hit bookstores anytime soon. He estimates that it will be roughly two years before the book is released. But his recent book tour across the country has supplied him with a wealth of story ideas. It is safe to say that Howard Mosher will not stop hiking, cross-country skiing, fishing or writing anytime soon.