Novel a leisurely tale of Maine in 1896

CORDELIA UNDERWOOD or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League, by Van Reid, Viking-Penguin, New York, 400 pages, hardcover, $24.95.

Tobias Walton squinted past his rifle’s sights at Maude. For some inexplicable reason, Walton had been assumed to be the big-game hunter hired to capture this escaped circus bear. The gentleman was astonished to see the bear tuck her head down between her forepaws and raise her hindquarters into the air.

“Gaping where he fully expected to behold gnashing fangs, he saw instead a pair of swaying bear’s feet. Lowering his gaze to Maude’s face, his eyes grew wider still, and he said: `Good heavens! She is standing on her head!”‘

Angry voices demanded that Walton shoot the creature; however, the gentleman flatly refused, announcing: “I have bagged my share of ducks, and in my thin youth successfully tracked the white-tailed deer. I come from a long line of hunting people on my mother’s side. I quite enjoy hunting. But I absolutely refuse to shoot any creature with the ingenuity, not to mention the sense of humor, to stand on its head!”

Mr. Walton is the main character in Van Reid’s delightful first novel, “Cordelia Underwood or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League.” His encounter with Maude is but one of the many “adventures” brought to life by the 42-year-old Edgecomb bookseller turned writer.

Reid described his book as a “historical novel that takes place generally on the coast of Maine in the summer of 1896. The main character, Tobias Walton, has just come home to Portland to deal with the family estate. A middle-age man. Portly. And purposely Pickwickian.”

Reid weaves together three parallel plot lines, which create a rich tapestry of life in Maine at the turn of the last century. The first is the return of Mr. Walton to his family home in Portland. Another is the mystery surrounding the piece of wilderness land near Millinocket left to Cordelia Underwood by her late Uncle Basil, who spent his life at sea.

“And a third plot line is the Moosepath League,” explained Reid. “Three men, real innocents, decide to form a club. All the characters meet early on, then their paths diverge and they meet once more. The three story lines have a very parallel feel to them. And you really know at the start that they’re all coming together. In the meantime, there are stories within stories, there are ghost stories, tall tales, and a lot of history and celebration of Maine — as sort of a state of mind, you might say.”

His story begins July 1, 1896, as a grizzled mariner emerges “from the rough end of Portland’s wharf district, where illegal liquor was peddled, where sailors and coarse landsmen and hard women caroused, and where well-meaning people did not linger.” Reid’s characters travel up the coast via train, carriage and ship, stopping for minor adventures and diversions in Edgecomb, Damariscotta, Ellsworth and Bangor before the story’s climax in the shadow of Mount Katahdin.

For the most part, the pace of Reid’s tale is as leisurely as the summer days it occupies. His story is fraught with humor rather than pathos, most provided by the founders of the Moosepath League — Ephram, Eagleton and Thump — a trio that has been dubbed “the Victorian three stooges” by one reviewer. They are more hapless than heartless, and their entanglements, particularly one involving a red union suit, are hilarious.

Before he found an agent and signed a three-book contract with Viking-Penguin, Reid’s novel was serialized in the local newspaper, the Lincoln County Weekly. Currently, the author is rewriting the first draft of the second book, which tells of the “Underground Adventure of the Moosepath League.”

“Cordelia Underwood,” released in June, was favorably reviewed in The New York Times and listed in its prestigious Editor’s Choice column.

What makes Reid’s novel so different from most books that hit the bestseller list these days is the absence of sex and violence, as well as the genuine sense of goodness that flows through each and every character, even the villains in the tale. And although the plot seems to wander off track at times, Reid’s knowledge of the history of the small towns his characters visit, as well as the morals and mores of the time, are well worth the detour.

“I’m very enamored of 19th and 18th century literature,” he said. “I’ve always liked writing in an old-fashioned syntax and from listening so much to storytelling, primarily by my grandfather, I understand there is a certain rhythm to it. … I do a lot of research in old newspapers, photographs, books and diaries.

“But my grandmother’s upbringing was very Victorian. In a moral sense, the way my grandparents lived was not that different from the way their grandparents lived. I just have a feel for that time and place. I’m pretty careful about trying to be accurate though, and do run some chapters by some local `expert witnesses.’ So far, I have not had one person say this isn’t so or that I got something wrong.”

In fact, almost everything about Reid’s novel is right — from the opening page to the tantalizing conclusion that teasingly hints at what will lead the Moosepath League on its next adventure in the second book, due to be released next summer. Reid’s window on the past century is a welcome addition to the literary landscape as we stumble forward into the 21st.

Van Reid will read from “Cordelia Underwood or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League” at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13, at Port in a Storm Bookstore in Somesville.