Walking to Gatlinburg

by Howard Frank Mosher

A stunning and lyrical Civil War thriller, Walking to Gatlinburg is a spellbinding story of survival, wilderness adventure, mystery, and love in the time of war.

Morgan Kinneson is both hunter and hunted.  The sharp-shooting 17-year-old from Kingdom County, Vermont, is determined to track down his brother Pilgrim, a doctor who has gone missing from the Union Army.  But first Morgan must elude a group of murderous escaped convicts in pursuit of a mysterious stone that has fallen into his possession.

It’s 1864, and the country is in the grip of the bloodiest war in American history.  Meanwhile, the Kinneson family has been quietly conducting passengers on the Underground Railroad from Vermont to the Canadian border.  One snowy afternoon Morgan leaves an elderly fugitive named Jesse Moses in a mountainside cabin for a few hours so that he can track a moose to feed his family.  In his absence, Jesse is murdered, and thus begins Morgan’s unforgettable trek south through an apocalyptic landscape of war and mayhem.

Along the way, Morgan encounters a fantastical array of characters, including a weeping elephant, a pacifist gunsmith, a woman who lives in a tree, a blind cobbler, and a beautiful and intriguing slave girl named Slidell who is the key to unlocking the mystery of the secret stone.  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.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Civil War, Book Club, Historical, Adventure, War

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Howard Frank Mosher was an American author. Over the course of his career, Mr. Mosher published 12 novels, two memoirs and countless essays and book reviews. In addition, his last work of fiction, points North will be published by St. Martin's press in the winter of 2018.

Mosher was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1979. A Stranger In the Kingdom won the New England Book Award for Fiction in 1991, and was later filmed by director Jay Craven. In 2006, Mosher received the Vermont Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts. In 2011 he was awarded the New England Independent Booksellers Association's President's Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Reviews

[Deborah Sloan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Walking to Gatlinburg: A Novel
It is not often that a writer can successfully integrate the concept of language into writing a book. Howard Frank Mosher in Walking to Gatlinberg has not just one dialect (common English) in but 3 or more language dialects including that of the 1860 slaves and hidden from society hillbilly that people rarely are exposed to. I truly would give this book 4 1/2 stars just for the dialects alone. I loved it.

Seventeen year old Morgan Kinneson starts his journey from the small family farm in Vermont to search for his brother Pilgrim Kinneson after first losing his charge of a slave he was delivering to freedom to killers sent to find the slave and a slave girl and boy. With clues from a stone the slave left to him Morgan sets out to find the missing slave girl who travels with a young boy in hopes that it will lead him to his brother Pilgrim who by last reports was a field doctor at Gettysberg.

Morgan's travels along the Underground Railway takes all sorts of interesting turns with the people he meets and in the process seventeen year old Morgan becomes a man just as one would expect of anyone who lived during such a violent time as the civil war period we witness in Walking to Gatlinberg. Some of these people were downright crazy but we aren't sure if that is just the way these people always are or if it's the war that caused them to be this way. In any case; Walking to Gatlinberg is a marvelous read that I loved giving us just a glimpse into the lives of the people who lived through the Civil War era and I know you will love it too! Be sure to pick up a copy if you love any part of history!

First chapter available online


# Hardcover: 352 pages





# Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books (March 2, 2010)





# ISBN-10: 0307450678





# ISBN-13: 978-0307450678

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Morgan Kinneson, from Kingdom County, Vermont, does indeed walk to Gatlinburg and even deeper into the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee (but not to the North Carolina side--the water tastes bad there, a mountaineer tells him) during the last year of the Civil War. But this is neither a standard road story nor a Civil War story. It is more fable than historical fiction. It is odd, disconcerting, and elegiac--the closest comparison I can think of in terms of its journey, scope, and reach for the fantastic is Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon: A Novel.

Morgan starts his quest in search of his brother after he has made a grave mistake in judgment that cost a man who had been entrusted to his care his life. His brother is likewise considered dead, most likely killed in the great conflagration at Gettysburg in 1863. But nine months later, Morgan will attempt to atone for his sin and confirm his faith that his brother is alive.

I use these spiritual terms advisedly, because there is much that is spiritual in Morgan's journey. He sees things, even the gray things of life, through the flinty eyes of a native Vermonter in shades of only black and white. But this is no spiritualized mythology. This is a real journey through a fantastic time and place. At times author Mosher walks the line of fact and fable so finely that you have to re-read to be sure he's meant what he said. Did Morgan really meet a mad old general firing anything he can cram into the barrel of a cannon at the birds surrounding a deserted fort? Did he really inherit an elephant from a dying circus Gypsy, and then use the elephant to tow a canal boat on the Erie Canal and clear a log jam on a river?

The answer is yes, and the wonder is amazing. We see a landscape, a nation, and a people,, even far north of Gettysburg, scarred and changed by war, willing and even forced to see and believe the unfathomable. Morgan see's and processes as well.

And he survives, always taking the direct approach to his adventures and trials, yet coming away changed, as the journey south toward his brother and his destination teach him new ways to think and believe, without changing who he is.

But don't let me scare you away thinking this is a deep mystical book that walks with its head in the clouds. It is firmly planted in joy, pain, and the dirt of real life. Indeed, one may say Morgan is the most optimistic person in the world he inhabits in spite of or perhaps because of his journey.

Oh, and I haven't told you one thing you need to know about Morgan that makes his character the more true yet the more fabulously heroic--he is 17 years old when he starts on his journey, and only 18 when it ends, with a lifetime of wisdom you will only glimpse on the very last page, which you will read to the end.

Best book I've read in a long time.

[Kiersten · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are scores of books that I read and promptly forget about. Some, if I see the cover or read the title, I can remember a bit about. Others escape me completely: I can read a full description of the book and still not remember anything else about it. Howard Frank Mosher's books do not fall into the category of forgettable books. They are so beautifully strange and interesting. He's also a wonderful, lyrical writer. Walking to Gatlinburg is set during the Civil War, although, with the exception of one flashback scene, none of the action takes place on the battlefield. It's written in a magical realism style. Think of Cold Mountain meets One Hundred Years of Solitude. Or maybe Big Fish would be more accurate. It brings up interesting questions about war, death, good and evil, and the nature of man. However, although it has the feel of a fable or allegory at times, it doesn't come with an easy moral at the end. This book was very violent and quite graphic (both in terms of gore and sexuality) in places, so keep that in mind before you pick it up.

[Sue · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was touted as "magical and wonderfully strange," but I'm afraid I only found it strange. I wanted so much to like it -- a thriller set in the Civil War with elements of the fantastic sounded right up my alley. After all, I loved The Terror, Dan Simmons' mixture of the fantastic and the historical. But the story in Walking to Gatlinburg simply could not engage my committed interest. Instead, I found the mixture of the realistic and the fantastic annoying and sometimes silly (really, an Amish woman who lives in a tree?) and the constant movement back and forth interrupted the rhythm of what could otherwise have been a strong historical thriller. All in all, just not my cup of tea.

[Cissy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though beautifully, creatively written, and though I couldn't put it down, this novel irritated me. It was labeled Civil War-era historical fiction, so I was eager to try it; but it was really more like a dark, almost mystical thriller. During the Civil War. The entire story meandered through such sordid, seedy settings and characters as to leave me feeling like the whole world is purely evil. And though I certainly liked the main character, his journey was so horrific and tragic that it almost became ridiculous. Ugh. Maybe I disliked the novel because it betrayed my expectations.

[tomlinton · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's rare recently
that I have a book in hand
that I want to slow down and savor
This a Civil War era thriller
but it's not about the war per se
When you read
keep the unabridged dictionary handy
It will increase your enjoyment
Better yet read it on a Kindle
The dictionary is built in

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-written novel of the hero-takes-a-journey theme. I appreciated the many references to Homer’s Odyssey.
Would be a good book to share with a group, because there is much symbolism to consider——as well as actual symbols, the runes.
There were dragons to be slain —-represented by the five evil-doers.
Civil War mythology (States rights)was entertained and dispelled. Robert E Lee even made an appearance.
The Underground Railroad was present throughout the book—-in a unique way, and was central to the plot.
This was truly a remarkable book, an American epic, with much to be found below the surface.

[Jo Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beacause we were headed to Gatlinburg for a family reunion a few weeks ago, I chose to read this book last month, before the reunion...the premise was interesting and fun, and I tend to love books about the Civil War. Morgan, a 17 year old Quaker, tracks his brother Pilgrim, through NY, PA, Gettysburg, MD, West VA, KY, TN, and has a plethora of adventures along the way...I enjoyed it, but not as much as I anticipated I would.

[Patty Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this fantastical fable. Will look for other books by Mosher now.

[Christopher Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked the premise of this book...Morgan Kinneson, a young conductor on the Underground Railroad goes off on a quest during the Civil War to find his missing brother. There were three things that Mosher excelled at in this work:

1. Building characters -- A lot of times, novelists can get caught up in the characterization of their own protagonist, foregoing a better understanding of the supporting roles. Mosher, however, built a great cast of secondary characters, all connected to each other in some way. From the opinionated, yet bewitchingly beautiful runaway slave Slidell, to the cavalcade of deviant killers on Morgan's trail, every character is great in its own manner. My personal favorite: Cobbler Tom.

2. Use of regional dialect -- Morgan interacts with the local townsfolk throughout his journey, from the Canadian border to the Cajun Bayou. Mosher masters all the little regionalisms of each dialect to perfection.

3. Creating settings -- Mosher has a way of chronicling the varying landscapes Morgan encounters during his adventure that many have already compared to Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain. That's a very fitting--and flattering--comparison, but one that is well-deserved.

The main criticism I have of this book, however, is the way Mosher glossed over major action sequences. One minute, Morgan is trekking through dense woodlands, the next he's in an all-out fight for his life with a murderous maniac, and then he's back on his way in the blink of an eye. It felt like the final showdown barely lasted a full page. With all the richness of Mosher's characters, it would have been better to delve deeper into the skirmishes among them along the way. Overall, 3 1/2 to 4 stars is an appropriate rating for this story.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Morgan Kinneson, a 17 year old from Maryland, sets out to find his brother Pilgrim, a doctor in the Confederate Army. Along the way, he must find a way to elude and/or kill a band of criminals determined to kill him for something in his possession.
If you like history, adventure, humor, and fantasy, this novel is for you. A rollicking, hair-raising tale involving all manner of human and beast, including a talking turtle who concludes a story to Morgan by saying, "I shan't trouble you with the grim particulars."
Needless to say, I fell hard for this novel and its author.

[Pamela Batson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little disappointed with the ending. I would have liked more closer on some of the characters.

[Lori]

really wanted to like this as historical fiction is one of my favorite genres but just didn't. the dialogue was really tedious and difficult to follow

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why do Americans write so much about criss-crossing their country in search of something? The landscapes traversed here are dream-like, surreal and sometimes nightmarish.

[H.L. Gibson · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I started reading this book, something about it seemed vaguely familiar. So, I checked the list of books the author had written, and sure enough I've read On Kingdom Mountain by Mosher. I returned to my review of said book, and while I remember it with much less favor, I gave it low stars but a rather decent review on my blog. I now believe I fell into the trap mentioned by a fellow reader of On Kingdom Mountain in that I tried to play nice rather than offend someone. That was stupid of me. I should have told the truth because as soon as I began Walking to Gatlinburg, the same unpleasant impressions resurfaced. Imagine Huck Finn's Nightmare on Elm Street, Odysseus meeting Hannibal Lecter, or Daniel Wallace's Big Fish populated with sociopathic murderers. There are some things that should never be the subject of a novel, which is meant for entertainment, and if these subjects are included, handle them with care. I understand Mosher wanted to show how horrible humanity is, but I questioned the mind that could create such characters and scenes to the point that Mosher seemed rather too like the very persons and situations he criticized. And, as always, the large amount of Godlessness that permeates his two books I've read will prevent me from reading anything else by him. I understand there are people who misuse Scripture out of ignorance and intent, but Mosher can be placed smack dab in the middle of them. Don't write about what you don't know and don't understand. Mosher's writing reminds me of the first time I listened to Alanis Morrisette's song, Forgiven, and read Baldwin's book, Go Tell It On the Mountain, in that one could clearly tell each had had a horrible experience with religion and now wanted everyone to believe that because of what they experienced, there is absolutely nothing true about God. Yes, lose your religion and keep your faith but keep pursuing. Anyhow, the only neat thing about the story was the fictional setting of Kingdom Mountain and the Kinneson Family to which Mosher returns and I will not.

[Amy Kenney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantasy usually isn't my gig. Walking to Gatlinburg is not a fantasy book but it does offer scenes of the fanatical type which make this book engaging and endearing. A young teenage boy is on a walking journey to find his brother, who was believed to have died in Gettysburg. In his heart, the young man knows his brother lives. Following a path from Vermont to the Carolinas during the Civil War encourages wild characters and outlandish scenes. The trials of a boy to become a man are at almost every juncture and every chapter reveals more of what a young man's character is built upon and reinforced by the ready decisions that need to be made in order to proceed and survive. It is not all chaos though, along the way there are beautiful scenes of love and the willingness of (most) mankind to act through honor, sacrifice and goodwill. The ending of this book is formulated and the reader can feel the peace and then the crescendo without being able to guess exactly how or who will be involved in the culmination of the story.
And please, do not read the last page first. It is the sweetest ending you could have imagined.

[Tracy S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haven't yet read a Howard Frank Mosher tale that didn't seem tall but tangibly real all at the same time. Although the civil war plays as more of a backdrop to Morgan's long and storied odyssey to Great Grandmother Mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, the war's dark truths color and shade every page. Morgan, the sure-footed and steady-shot young hero of this story, meets characters (and I do mean characters) all along his way that have been formed in some way by the vagaries of war. Morgan's keen sense of purpose in finding his only brother, his reckoning with his often difficult decisions along the way, and his Vermont roots, makes for an engaging protagonist. His journey - full of friends, foes, crazy adventures, and remarkable landscapes - sweeps you up and tumbles you along, for better or for worse. The author's details about the settings, varied peoples and their ways of life, guns and gun making, as well as the war itself, are meticulous but not overdrawn, and colorful but not hyperbole. I always enjoy Howard Frank Mosher's "way with words" - and this one did not disappoint.

[Lisa Perkowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the weirdest historical fiction Civil War novels I've ever read, yet I found it to be engaging and a wonderful adventure story. The strange and mythical adventure that Morgan undertakes trying to find his brother conjures up folkloreish characters and tales that remind you of the Odyssey or a long yarn by Mark Twain.
Fast paced with chapters that revolve around unique characters, then wrap up and move on to the next character, the book keeps you hooked until the very end. If you like Civil War fiction, this is one to add to the list - it'll definitely be one of the most unique Civil War stories you'll read.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mosher's book is unique, at least in my reading of modern literature. I can only think to compare it to Homer's, The Odyssey, with a hero whose character is noble and true, yet, like all humans, flawed. (There is at least one scene that appears to be taken directly from Homer's sirens song) It is a tale of good versus evil, set in a time (the American Civil War) when all appears evil. The reader can become a bit confused by the variety of men searching to kill our hero, but all is clarified in the climatic ending.

[Sheila Mulcahy · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fantastic odyssey of heroic and monstrous proportions as a seventeen-year-old abolitionist leaves his Northern Kingdom home in pursuit of murdering, marauding escaped convicts across the northern and southern mountains while searching for his missing brother, a Union doctor. Episodes of adventure, survival, friendship, hunting and being hunted surround this coming-of-age story during the Civil War. Excellent writing that keeps the story taut, visceral and exciting. Four Stars

[Donald Crane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was certainly not predictable, but also was a bit disjointed and two-dimensional. With the author now dead, there will never be a Mosher book that quite measures up to A Stranger in the Kingdom, which was about as good as a novel can be. And unfortunately, all but the first few chapters takes place outside the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, which is where Mosher’s characters adeptly reflect the real characters that live here.

[Kyra · Rating 4 out of 5]

An old-fashioned picaresque novel but grimmer than expected, centred as it is around the violent aftermath of the most violent war to rend this country. There were spots in this book where I was outright terrified. All in all, an unexpected firecracker of a read. See if you can spot the one editing blooper (hint: its in the caves).

[Elisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author uses a lot of big words that felt like he was trying harder to impress than to tell a good story. The introduction of the elephant in Civil War America was when I decided to throw in the towel.

[Gail Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really great read

Very slow beginning and I thought perhaps I wouldn’t finish. As I grew more involved I couldn’t put it away I’m glad I read to the amazing end You will love this book

[Jo Donoghue · Rating 5 out of 5]

My goodness Howard, what a ride! Quite a story teller you are. The novel read like a friend I didn’t want to let go of. In the end I hold a memory to savor from this day forward. Thanks for your lessons of life in such a dear tale. A true gift you have and share with others. Thank you for you.

[Phyllis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, believable historical story. The people Morgan meets along the journey to find his brother are very interesting.
As with Chris, the ending hits you in the face but is acceptable.

[Milo Geyelin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing after The River Flows North. Young adult fiction. Good as far as that goes but not for me.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this immensely. Great pacing, plotting, and use of language. Mosher's characters are richly created and absolutely come to life. It is a fantastic read.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange construction of a book to me. Staccato action scenes that are as far fetched as one could imagine; sometimes just weird.

[Grant Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fanciful good read

This is a well written interesting tale, evoking the big questions of why the Civil War. I’d call it a page turner.