In the pages of Daniel Mason's latest novel, a family steps away from the familiar rhythms of Californian life and sets down roots, however temporarily, in the Vermont countryside. Published on 7 July by Random House, Country People arrives as a 320-page narrative that blends humour with quiet profundity, reminding readers of the enduring pull of family unity and personal initiative when confronted with the unknown.
Mason, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of the acclaimed North Woods, was born and raised in Northern California. He studied biology at Harvard and medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. His background in the sciences and literature informs a story that moves with graceful assurance between the everyday and the mythic.
At the centre stands Miles Krzelewski, a PhD student immersed in Russian folktales, who relocates with his wife Kate, a visiting professor, their children Wesley and Olive, and the family dog Giuseppe. What begins as an experiment in rural living becomes a deeper reckoning with marriage, parenthood, belief and the stories we tell ourselves. The novel draws on literary echoes from Milton, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Nabokov, weaving these references into a rollicking yet tender account of adaptation and resilience.
I wanted to write about a family that decides to take a leap into the unknown, leaving behind the comforts of their urban life for a year in the countryside, and the ways in which that experience reshapes their understanding of themselves and their relationships.
Mason offered that reflection in a public interview discussing the inspiration for his novel. The result is a book that quietly affirms the humanist values of self-reliance and communal connection, values rooted in Western literary tradition. Rather than yielding to narratives of rootless modernity, Country People insists on the formative power of place and the bonds that sustain us through change.
