Country People: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • A year in the life of a family as they strike out into the unknown (aka Vermont), leaving all the comforts of home behind—a rollicking, lyrical novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason, the bestselling author of North Woods and one of America’s greatest living writers

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family. So when his wife, Kate, accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the faraway forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, one who possesses, in Kate’s words, a great capacity “to fall in with anyone, anywhere.” And no sooner does he arrive than he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales, from a ghostly tree surgeon to a scythe-mad biochemist, from a Shakespearean temptress to a photographer of snowflakes obsessed with chronicling, on thousands of index cards, the world’s delusions in an Inventory of Wrong Ideas.

The new friends, the enchanted woods, the histories: sure, no PhD, but all good fun. Until Miles stumbles upon a bizarre—perhaps ridiculous—local legend, which, he soon suspects, might not be just a legend after all.

Joyous, absurd, and life-affirming, Country People is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world.

Daniel Mason is the author of the collection A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize and winner of the California Book Award, and three novels, including The Winter Soldier and The Piano Tuner. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages, adapted as an opera, and awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize for Fiction, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is an assistant professor in the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry.

www.danielmasonbooks.com

“Charming . . . a prescription for summer amusement that takes immediate effect. . . . lovely if occasionally confounding company, like going in and out of a thick mist. . . . the prose of Country People flows like a babbling brook . . . There’s so much fine, freewheeling observation and pillowy erudition here, it’s tempting just to sink in.”—The New York Times

“The surface structures in Country People may be sugar-spun, but the novel’s foundations are solid, and its roots—the tangled and interconnected web of stories that gave rise to its new stories—are deliciously deep. The esoteric is counterbalanced by the mundane; family life is judged as worthy of investigation as underground caverns; and the whole thing is delivered in prose so witty and gorgeous that it calls to mind Nabokov’s comic masterpiece Pnin, surely another of the book’s literary antecedents. This is, put simply, a joyful book—and the deeper you dig, the more joyful it becomes.”—The Guardian

“Satirical but big-hearted and empathetic. . . . Mason is a lively, fluid writer; here he glides smoothly between present and past, myth and everyday detail, skepticism and credulity. He has fun with his characters without making fun of them. . . . It is simply put, very funny. . . . Reading Country People in public I kept having to muffle my LOLs. That’s never a bad sign. The affection that Mason clearly feels for Miles and his brood is infectious.”—The Boston Globe

“Delightful . . . joy-making . . . one of our country’s most gifted novelists, Mason has spun a yarn about parenthood and marriage, storytelling and imagination.”—Bookpage, starred review

“My favorite of the year: Country People. . . . has the bright ease of visiting a good old friend. . . . one of those books where nothing happens, and yet everything does.”—Chicago Tribune

“The humor—dry, humane, occasionally absurd—is ever-present . . . a cast of small-town figures whose quirks are rendered with generosity rather than satire.”—Booklist, starred review

“Mason has fun exploring marriage, friendship, parenthood and the beguiling allure of storytelling and fantasy in this upbeat romp.”—NPR

“A lively cast of local characters.”—Harper’s Bazaar

“Wonderful—full of joy—and exactly the kind of reading experience we could all do with right now . . . the book of the summer.”—Mick Herron, bestselling author of Slow Horses

Daniel Mason’s novel Country People, a celebrated Good Morning America Book Club Pick, is a luminous, big-hearted, and gently satirical exploration of marriage, parenthood, and the profound human need for connection. Following the critical success of his historical epic "North Woods," Mason pivots to a more contemporary and straightforward narrative that functions as both a charming comedy of manners and a deep meditation on the power of storytelling. The novel seamlessly blends the classic fish-out-of-water trope with an off-campus academic comedy, ultimately asking profound questions about what we choose to believe and why.

At the center of the story is the Krzelewski-Petrosian family, uprooting their lives in the urban Bay Area of California for a fresh start in the idyllic, fictional town of Greensbury, Vermont. The patriarch, forty-five-year-old Miles Krzelewski, is a deeply devoted husband and an adoring father known for spinning outlandish bedtime stories. However, he is also professionally adrift. For twelve years, Miles has been agonizingly stalled on his PhD dissertation concerning Russian folktales, constantly changing topics and alienating his advisors. He is haunted by the lingering feeling that he has become a disappointment. In sharp contrast, his wife, Kate Petrosian, is a highly successful and grounded Milton scholar who has just accepted a prestigious visiting professorship in Vermont. Accompanied by their twelve-year-old son Wesley, nine-year-old daughter Olive, and a truffle-hunting Lagotto Romagnolo dog named Giuseppe—who hilariously lives in a region completely devoid of truffles—the family embarks on a cross-country road trip toward a new chapter.

Upon arriving in the verdant, enchanting forests of New England, Miles vows that this will be the year he finally conquers his academic demons and finishes his degree. Unfortunately for his dissertation, Miles is a man governed by sudden, all-consuming enthusiasms. Rather than locking himself in a study, he is immediately intoxicated by the rural landscape and the novelty of country living. The family settles into a mouse-infested house lent to them by an economics professor, and Giuseppe the dog immediately begins furiously digging at the floorboards—a fitting metaphor for a novel fundamentally obsessed with what lies beneath the surface. Miles, too, begins his own kind of digging, abandoning his academic responsibilities to wander the woods, marveling at the simple, mythic qualities of authentic grass baseball fields and cheap, neighborhood lemonade stands.

As the family attempts to integrate into their new environment, Mason introduces a wonderfully absurd and colorful cast of local characters. Miles possesses a unique capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere, and he eagerly embraces the eccentric "country people" of Greensbury. He finds himself mingling with Nausicaa Torres-Lakeman, a dramatic and flirtatious school theater teacher; an exterminator known as the Rat Man; a biochemist turned apple orchardist who introduces Miles to the ancient art of scything; and a scooter-riding photographer who obsessively documents the world’s delusions on thousands of index cards in his "Inventory of Wrong Ideas." These locals provide a surrogate community for Miles, pulling him further away from his scholarly pursuits but fulfilling his deep, unspoken yearning for camaraderie and belonging.

The narrative takes a fantastical turn when Miles meets Hugh, a rugged, knife-wielding trekking guide who introduces him to the town's most bizarre secret. Hugh belongs to a fringe local society dedicated to the belief that the Earth is hollow. According to the centuries-old writings of a nineteenth-century pastor named Jeremiah Wylkes, a portal to a magnificent, subterranean world exists right beneath their Vermont town. For a man who has spent over a decade studying magical rabbit holes in Russian folklore, the temptation of a literal one proves absolutely irresistible. Miles plunges headfirst into this local conspiracy, treating the fantastical legend not as a joke, but as a thrilling new reality to be explored.

Mason utilizes this subterranean conspiracy to gently probe the psychology of belief. The followers of the Wylkes legend are not merely punchlines; they are everyday people drawn to the myth by loneliness, grief, or an innate desire to experience wonder in a rigidly rational world. As Miles becomes further entrenched in the group, he finds the companionship and imaginative spark that his isolated academic life had thoroughly extinguished. The novel posits that whether the underground world is a geographical reality or a shared delusion ultimately matters very little. What truly matters is the community it fosters and the comfort the story provides to those who choose to believe it.

Ultimately, Country People transcends its quirky premise to deliver a deeply empathetic portrait of a modern family navigating midlife transitions. Kate remains endlessly patient and supportive of her husband's meandering journey, highlighting a marriage anchored in profound grace and mutual acceptance. As the children thrive in their new schools and Miles finds his footing among the dreamers and eccentrics, the novel reaches a joyous, life-affirming conclusion. Daniel Mason brilliantly illustrates that true fulfillment often lies not in achieving monumental professional milestones, but in embracing the absurdities of life, cherishing the people around us, and never losing the capacity to be enchanted by a good story. For readers who enjoy carrying a vast, portable library of engaging fiction on their Kindle or Google Books, this novel is a delightful and highly recommended addition to any digital collection.