Grant Wiggins, the teacher in the small plantation school, grudgingly agrees to visit Jefferson in jail and attempt to teach him pride and dignity before his execution. It is also the lens through which Martin observes them as they persist in a difficult but rewarding existence. Gregory Martin lives with his wife, Christine, and son, Oliver, in the Green Lake neighborhood of Seattle. In October of this year, he received a Seattle Arts Commission Artists Award in Creative Nonfiction, and he is now at work on a novel set in remote southern Idaho. He's turned to fiction after promising his relatives in Mountain City that his next book would not be about them.
Mountain City begins, and ends, with humor.
The second person you voice, and the third person singular. Readers do not become unsympathetic when characters do wrong. They become more sympathetic. Taking care is one of Mountain City s principal themes. Just like the musical plainsong, this is a lovely and unadorned work that is difficult to get out of your head.