Jan Karon intended To Be Where You Are, published in 2017, to be her final Mitford novel. She insisted more than once that she had said all she had to say about Mitford. She even stopped writing for a while in response to the heartbreaking losses of her mother, her daughter, and her brother in the space of six years, explaining that “there was really nothing left in me to write with.”
I think Jan was surprised as everyone else when she ended up writing My Beloved, the fifteenth Mitford novel. While in France in 2022, she tried to write her autobiography, but it wasn’t going well. Later, as a writing exercise, she decided to work on a Mitford short story she had started writing in 2008. When she announced the novel at the 2024 spring tea at the Mitford Museum, she said, “I was laughing, and I was crying, and I was at home in Mitford.”
You can read about and watch her announcement here.
As thrilled as I am about this wonderful new novel, my greatest joy is that our beloved author herself is at home in Mitford again.
My Beloved is the story of a love letter that Father Tim writes to Cynthia as her Christmas gift getting lost and being passed around town. I must confess that when I first heard this, I was a bit dubious. Wouldn’t anyone who found it just return it to him, for Pete’s sake? But when I read an advance review copy of the novel, I saw how brilliantly Jan makes this unlikely premise completely plausible—even life-changing for one character. It works in Mitford.
But there’s more to the book than the mystery of a missing letter. We catch up with our old Mitford friends, plus a few new ones. Dooley and Lace’s daughter, Sadie, is almost three, which means that it’s about three and a half years since the end of To Be Where You Are.
One of the many things I love about the Mitford novels is the way they make me both laugh and cry in a combination I haven’t encountered elsewhere. There are lots of laughs in My Beloved; as in real life, there’s also sorrow. One of the most heartbreaking parts is learning more about Cynthia’s back story—the suicide attempt we briefly heard of in A Light in the Window and the details and exposure of her first husband’s infidelity that drove her to it. But we also meet the friends who loved her through the crisis and her recovery, and we see her spiritual conversion.
The epigraph for My Beloved is I John 4:7: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God.” The novel explores the important Mitford themes of love, helping, gratitude, forgiveness, and redemption. To avoid spoilers, I’ll just say there’s one story of redemption that literally took my breath away.
A lovely bonus feature is the four-page afterword, where Jan tells her readers, “I’m always writing to just one person: you.” She discusses her cultural background in western North Carolina, her use of voice and vernacular (all those apostrophes, don’t you know), and how this book came about.
Near the end of the novel, Father Tim tells Hope Murphy, “This town, this time in our lives, this holiness of being—it’s the flat-out best of all worlds in the scheme of things.” All I can say is “Amen!”
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If you’d like to enjoy the Mitford novels in the company of others, I invite you to join us in the Mitford Book Club on Facebook, where we’re exploring the rich depths of Jan Karon’s writing in a warm community of Mitford lovers.
The novel’s publication date is October 7, but you can preorder it. I’ve ordered all 3 formats! Find My Beloved here:
Note: Mitford fans were heartbroken to learn of the 2021 death of beloved narrator John McDonough, who brought so many of the Mitford books to life through his voice. To narrate My Beloved, Jan Karon chose Ryan Lee Dunlap from seven award-winning narrators. She explained in a September 9 post on her Facebook page: “After hearing and choosing Ryan, I learned he’s from my home state! And his mom is a ‘huge’ Mitford fan, don’t you know. No one knew this until I started asking about his family. So there you go, gentle readers. Our new voice, Ryan Dunlap, grew up hearing the speech patterns of my lovable, infuriating, and unforgettable characters.”
If you’d like to hear about upcoming events, including a webinar about what makes Mitford unique and—eventually—interactive online classes about the Mitford novels, sign up for my occasional All Things Mitford newsletter at www.MitfordNews.com.
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