A New Song by Jan Karon

First published: 1999

Edition(s) used:A New Song. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2005

Genre(s): Novel

Subgenre(s): Evangelical fiction; romance

Core issue(s): African Americans; alienation from God; awakening; connectedness; faith; pastoral role; responsibility

Principal characters

• Father Timothy Kavanagh, the protagonist, an Episcopal priest
• Cynthia Coppersmith Kavanagh, Timothy’s wife
• Dooley Barlowe, a neglected sixteen-year-old boy given a home by Kavanagh
• Morris Love, a disabled Whitecap neighbor, a gifted organist
• Jeffrey Tolson, a former Whitecap choir director
• Janette Tolson, Jeffrey’s abandoned wife
• Otis Bragg, a wealthy businessman
• Marlene Bragg, Otis’s wife
• Hélène Pringle, the Kavanaghs’ tenant

Overview

Father Timothy Kavanagh, protagonist of four earlier Mitford novels (At Home in Mitford, 1994; A Light in the Window, 1995; These High Green Hills, 1996; and Out to Cannan, 1997), has been retired for six months from his Episcopalian ministry in Lord’s Chapel in the mountain town of Mitford. Approaching his sixty-sixth birthday, he wonders how next to serve God, but he has already accepted an interim appointment at the church of St. John’s in the Grove on Whitecap Island, about six hundred miles from Mitford. He and his wife, Cynthia Coppersmith Kavanagh, a prominent children’s book writer and illustrator, prepare to leave Mitford but cannot leave their responsibilities behind.

Dooley Barlowe is a particular responsibility. Taken in by Kavanagh when eleven, Dooley is now sixteen, wants a car, and wants to remain in Mitford. While denying him a car, Kavanagh believes he has made satisfactory arrangements for Dooley to remain in Mitford under close supervision. They plan to continue the search for his lost siblings, abandoned by their alcoholic mother. That mother, now recovering, is engaged to a stable man; the couple wants Kavanagh to return to Mitford to marry them. The Kavanaghs also must rent out the rectory that Kavanagh bought when he retired. Their tenant is a Frenchwoman, Hélène Pringle, who apparently wants to teach piano in Mitford. They take her at her word. Reluctantly, they leave for the island, arriving in a storm.

The storm foreshadows challenges to come. Whitecap Island, linked to the North Carolina mainland by a ferry and a frequently broken bridge, is a community like Mitford, but the Episcopalian pastor has departed, leaving broken bridges among his parishioners and neighbors. The principal problem is that Jeffrey Tolson, the former choir director, has run off with the church organist, abandoning his wife, and children and failing to provide financial support for them. He is not welcomed by church members, especially wealthy businessman Otis Bragg and his wife, Marlene, who believe that their money should control church affairs. Although Father Kavanagh abandons his usual noncombative style to confront Tolson in great anger, what he wants is Tolson’s repentance and acceptance of responsibility, not his expulsion. Tolson, however, believes his acceptance in the church is obligatory because his family has been important in the church. Tolson’s arrogance is overwhelming. He cannot find work on the island, but he refuses to work on the mainland because the commuting would be inconvenient. He has no work, so he believes he has no financial obligation to his wife and children. The woman with whom he has eloped has left him. Busy condemning Jeffrey, church members have ignored the plight of the abandoned and penniless wife, Janette, who has lapsed into suicidal depression. Father Kavanagh faces down Bragg to obtain money for her hospitalization and, because relatives cannot take care of all of the children, takes the youngest, Jonathan Tolson, into his home, although the aging priest and his wife find it difficult to deal with a child of three. Janette has given up hope and any sense of connectedness. Kavanagh visits her and gently persists until he gets her to respond to him. Church members finally acknowledge their responsibility and how to address it: Since Janette is an accomplished seamstress, they place orders with her and offer her hope for an income.

Father Kavanagh also takes on the challenge of Morris Love, a Whitecap neighbor. Plagued with a series of physical disabilities including Tourette’s syndrome, mocked when he tried to attend school, and abandoned by most of his family, he has, under his late grandfather’s care, become a brilliant organist and composer. Nonetheless, he has closed himself in his house and refuses any human contact except that of a highly educated African American woman whose mother took care of Love until her death. The physically disabled and the victims of segregation—Whitecap’s Episcopal Church has not welcomed African Americans—have a common bond. Love rejects Kavanagh’s many overtures, but Kavanagh again persists. Kavanagh is away on a trip when a serious storm ravages the island. He returns to find that his family, the young Tolson, and the family pets have been given sanctuary in Love’s home. Afterward, Love rudely rejects any further contacts. Kavanagh can do nothing but pray.

He must also pray about problems in Mitford. Prevented from returning to Mitford, first by an unsympathetic bishop and later by the storm, Kavanagh finds pain awaiting him there. A pilot friend flies food to Whitecap Island, and friends make it possible for Dooley’s mother and his future stepfather to be married on the island, but Dooley himself has innocently been implicated in a crime and arrested. Kavanagh’s tenant, Hélène Pringle, has been caught stealing from the rectory and has filed a lawsuit against him. He finally learns that the source of her bitterness is in the money that has been used to underwrite Hope House, a Mitford sanctuary for the aged with which Kavanagh is involved; she believes she deserves part of the money. If Love has been embittered by bad parenting and physical disabilities, Pringle has been deliberately taught to hate her American relatives.

That Kavanagh is able to reconcile these people, change their lives, and return them to membership in their communities is the product of his continual prayer, his faith in God, his acknowledgment of his own helplessness and need for God’s help, and his strong sense of perseverance. His Whitecap Island triumph is a homecoming celebration, when the church has been restored after the storm and most of the characters (except for Jeffrey Tolson) have been reconciled with the Christian community. Eventually, the Mitford problems are resolved. The book ends as Father Kavanagh again meets Tolson.

Christian Themes

Storm-ravaged Whitecap Island, with its fragile links to the mainland, is a metaphor for the souls of those who attempt to cope with serious problems while alienated both from God and from the Christian community. Father Kavanagh suffers a sense of his own vulnerability, but he aids those in need through his fervent faith in God and in Christ as a personal savior, through the example he presents of a Christian life, and through his unceasing prayers. Kavanagh believes that the God of love helps humans endure troubles, not escape them. While the Episcopalian faith is frequently associated with ritual and liturgy, Father Kavanagh uses the liturgy only to forge links between humans and God, with each other, and with the congregations of the past, not for the liturgy’s own sake. He departs from liturgy when inspired to do so. He calls on the Bible, but he calls on appropriate secular verse to heal when it is appropriate.

Father Kavanagh’s faith, however, is not simply directed toward emotional support. He also demands personal accountability, confronting both the successful businessman Otis Bragg and the man who has abandoned his family, Jeffrey Tolson. Kavanagh and his wife, despite the personal pain the situation causes them, have his Mitford tenant, Hélène Pringle, arrested for theft, although later they are willing to drop charges. They model personal responsibility for their parishioners, both by the care they take of others in Mitford and on the island and by their willingness to sacrifice themselves to the needs of others. In Mitford, they look after Dooley Barlowe and continue a search for the boy’s lost siblings. On the island, they take in a three-year-old whose mother is hospitalized, despite the pain the situation causes Cynthia Kavanagh, unable to bear a child, when she must return the boy to his mother.

Sources for Further Study

Jones, Malcolm, Patricia King, Sherry Keene-Osborn, and Mike Hendricks. “Touched by the Angels.” Newsweek 133 (May 3, 1999): 71-72. Focuses on Jan Karon, Iyanla Vanzant, and Anne Lamott as three best-selling mainstream religious authors.

Stanton, Luke A. “Karon, Jan.” In Current Biography Yearbook 2003. New York: H. W. Wilson, 2003. Comprehensive short biography of Karon accompanied by a description of her writings.

Whitcomb, Claire. “Introducing Jan Karon: The View from Main Street.” Victoria 12, no. 1 (January, 1998): 26-29, 104. Describes the genesis of the Mitford novels in the real town of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, and the development of the novels themselves.

Winner, Lauren F. “New Song, Familiar Tune.” Christianity Today 43, no. 8 (July 12, 1999): 62, 64-65. Briefly describes the Christian journey of Timothy and Cynthia Kavanagh from Mitford to Whitecap Island.