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On a sultry day in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, the customers at a local grill swap wisecracks with the young women behind the counter. "What do you usually eat here?" one newcomer asks the teenage cook.

"Nothing," she says, waving a greasy spatula. Actually, the hamburgers are fine, but the real appeal of this place is the decor. "Don't talk about yourself," a poster declares, "we'll talk about you when you leave." Other wall literature addresses concerns of politics, religion, and male-female relations with about equal seriousness.

But amid the clamor of words, hanging near a window that looks out on Main Street is a little group of photographs. Look closer and you'll see snapshots of the restaurant employees with a local writer who has gradually become a celebrity—Jan Karon, author of the Mitford novels: At Home in Mitford, A Light in the Window, These High, Green Hills, and, this summer thirteenth on the hardback besteller list, Out to Canaan. All four books follow the ups and downs of a likable Episcopal priest named Fr. Timothy Kavanaugh. But the main character of the Mitford series is the mythical town of Mitford itself. Over a million readers have visited it in print and on audiotape, and many of those readers have gone on to become pseudocitizens, following local news in a Mitford newsletter, keeping up with its characters like real friends and neighbors.

Some people think that Blowing Rock is Mitford. With its maple-shaded back streets, its mossy rock walls and bursting rhododendrons, this North Carolina resort town could pass for the place Jan Karon describes in At Home in Mitford:

"Mitford," observed a travel feature by a prominent newspaper, "is a village delightfully out of step with contemporary America. Here, where streets are named for flowers, and villagers can seek the shade of a dozen fragrant rose arbors, spring finds most of the citizenry, including merchants, making gardens."

Whether the resemblance goes deeper than the scenery, though, I may never know. Walking to the restaurant where I have arranged to meet the author, I hear a multitude of Yankee voices. Downtown Blowing Rock is thriving; shop doors open and close, people fill the sidewalks. This is a tourist town, and I'm a tourist.

I enter the Village Cafe from a damp alley. "I'm meeting Jan Karon here," I tell the hostess. "Could I have that table?" I point to one beside the garden, outdoors but under an awning.

"That's exactly the one she's reserved for you."

"Oh, really?" I crouch behind my menu, waiting for a woman I've never met, studying every female face that passes me through the garden. Finally, just when I've leaned over to check the batteries in my tape recorder, I hear the hostess say, "Hello, Miss Jan!"

A beautiful, golden-haired woman stands a few feet away on the flagstone walkway, wearing a pale linen suit and sandals. I glimpse a gracious, forthright, maybe a little sad (or just tired after a long book tour) author. She chats with the restaurant staff, then a few visitors. She knows them all; she's a part of this place. I get up to introduce myself, but I am quickly drowned out by several more friends who come by.

"I've been telling everybody about your books, Jan!"

"I wanted to watch you on CBS, but the TV wasn't working."

"Somebody asked me if I knew 'Jan Kar-ON' and I said, 'Oh you must mean my friend Jan KAR-on!'"

Big laugh, all around. The friends leave. I take a deep breath, and Karon and I sit down together with a few opening pleasantries. Did I have a good trip? Yes, the mountains are lovely. Do I like the hotel? Yes, it has a heated swimming pool. We open our menus. "The crab cakes," she says in a gentle but precise Carolina accent, "are delicious. And the Greek salad is wonderful. Do you like feta cheese?"

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September 1 1997, Vol. 41, No. 10