The Comfort of Our Kind — Tom Stoner

Situated between two mountain ridges, the New England town of Franklin Notch celebrates its history and the characters who have forged it. The cornerstone of its heritage is Talbert's Treaty, an eighteenth-century agreement between the original settlers and the Sagaweh Indian nation---as discovered by local historian Wes Moffatt, ex-host of a regionally famous kiddie TV show. The Comfort of Our Kind is narrated by Daniel "Boone" Moffatt, Wes's oldest son and local chief of police, who describes life with his sister, Veronica, a misanthropic nurse with a weakness for Xanax; his brother, Reggie, a disgraced sportscaster who has been living undetected in Cinderella's Castle; his mother, a mystic ex-nun (who everyone still calls "Sister"); and his father, who has just been accused of inventing bad history by concocting Talbert's Treaty and most of the local lore.



As children, Boone, Veronica, and Reggie were trained by their mother's puzzling bedtime stories to serve in God's Army of Saints and "fight for Goodness on earth." Now, as adults, they search for their gifts of Faith, Hope, and Grace in a parade of life-altering adventures while struggling with the presence of evil in the world. Along the way, they collide with a collection of characters, including a serial killer, a Zenlike naturalist doctor, a genius Mafia princess, phony Native Americans, and the Devil himself in various incarnations of human vanity. Against the deadline of Wes and Sister's fiftieth wedding anniversary and Boone's apocalyptic seventh visit from the Devil, the Moffatt family struggles to unite as a force of goodness and to reclaim the respect of their neighbors and friends.