Penguin Random House
Shakespeare was wise to the fact that most folks prefer lighter entertainments in the summer. Hence, A Midsummer Night's Dream, that confection of a play in which Rustics and Royals and meddlesome Fairies collide in a forest. Country People, by Daniel Mason, is a satisfying spin on the Bard's bubble of an amusement. For anyone slow to catch on, Mason even ends his novel with an elementary school performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The wanderers into a Vermont forest here are not exactly royals, but, you might say they're the kind of people Jefferson had in mind when he proposed that the United States be governed, not by an inherited aristocracy, but by an aristocracy of the intellect. Or perhaps not.
Kate is a hotshot; a distinguished scholar of Blake and Milton. Currently teaching in California, she's been offered a one-year visiting professorship at a college in Vermont. Miles, her husband, has been working (sort of) on his dissertation for the past 14 years — something to do with Russian folklore. To be fair, though, Miles, an eternal graduate student, does provide caretaking to the couple's two young children, as well as for Kate, who's been diagnosed with MS. He also tends to their dog, Giuseppe, who's possessed, much like Miles himself, of a fairly useless skill: Giuseppe has been bred to hunt truffles.
