Touched by the Angels

摘要

To understand Jan Karon, you have to know about livermush. Liver-mush is a western North Carolina ... um ... delicacy, a sort of down-home pate forged out of pork liver, bread crumbs, sage and a few other odds and ends, and fried on the griddle. Karon loves the stuff and mentions it every chance she gets in her five novels about the fictional town of Mit-ford. About the size of Blowing Rock, N.C. (population: 1,800), where the 62-year-old author lives, Mitford is kind of like Andy Griffith's Mayberry, but from Aunt Bea's point of view. Quaint? A little. An idealized picture of home, untroubled by crime, traffic or any of the other plagues of big-city life? Certainly. And, Karon insists, as real and palatable as livermush. "This is my culture," she brags. "I'm proud of it."