Jan Karon, 63, had to leave home. She hasn't abandoned Mitford, the fictional home of characters such as Father Tim Kavanagh, Cynthia Coppersmith, Dooley Barlowe, and Uncle Billy Watson, who have charmed millions of people into reading At Home in Mitford, A Light in the Window, These High, Green Hills, Out to Canaan, and A New Song.

But like Mitford, which became like a too-tight collar for Father Tim upon announcing his retirement, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, where Karon has lived for several years since quitting a successful career in advertising and where she has written nearly all her fiction, was threatening to choke the kind of freedom she needed to continue writing. She still has a house and family there, reasons to visit often. But for creative privacy, success sent her scurrying.

"People were coming from all parts of the country to Blowing Rock," Karon said in a recent interview. "Folks in town would tell them where I lived. I'd have people climbing through my hedges, ringing my doorbell, and peeking into my windows at all hours of the day."

Karon didn't flee the intrusions because she dislikes people. Her love for people is clear in how she treats characters in her books. They win respect, not with extraordinary feats over uncommon odds, but by moving through life's struggles, surprises, and interactions with an innate devotion to things that really matter. To understand them fully, readers must start with the first book in the series and go from there.

Father Tim, for example, whom Karon describes as the parson (derived from the word, person), is the one to whom people in town reveal themselves, the one who listens to what's happening in their lives.

"He's an ordinary human being, sweet and tender, and a man of God, who lives out his convictions in the midst of a town filled with other ordinary people," Karon says.

Father Tim is also human in his frailty; a man who struggles with disappointments, impatience, fears, and health concerns. He gets tired and used up by personal and parish demands, yet he's too sensible and committed to take a little time off, much less an expensive vacation.

"Even after he retires, when he's got all the time in the world, and has a bit of money from what his mother left him, he just doesn't know how to have fun," Karon says.

Cynthia Coppersmith, Father Tim's attractive neighbor with good legs and a sassy white cat and who eventually becomes the Episcopal priest's soul sounding-board and wife, knows how to have fun. She can, and does, carve out time for a retreat, vacation, even retirement for her harried husband. But like him and every other character in Karon's books, she is not without flaws. Sometime in her past there was a divorce to a high-ranking government official and a near-suicidal depression. And she is far too committed to writing children's books to fit the mold of a small-town parson's wife.

Karon believes that flawed mix is what attracts readers to her books.

"These people are flawed just like you and me," she says. "They're people in whom we find ourselves."

The greatest lure of a Mitford book, however, is something that even Karon finds astounding. For what most attracts people of both sexes from ages 10 to 90, is how ordinary people find meaning in their relationships with God in the shops and homes and pews of Mitford.

"People are starving to death for this kind of message," Karon says.

Early on, some well-meaning friends tried to counsel the author, saying, "Oh, you don't want to go out there and talk about Jesus in your books."

Her answer was unequivocal: "I'm going out there, and I'm talking about Jesus. I'm talking about people's relationships with him. Let the Holy Spirit do the rest."

That conviction was forged in the fire of Karon's own commitment to Christ at age 42, decades after a four-year marriage ended with divorce and a baby girl to support. The hardworking, single mom had won her way in the advertising world, working her way up from receptionist to creative vice president, before coming to the end of herself. After months of journaling and fervent prayer seeking guidance in what to do, she said goodbye to the world that had given her prosperity without peace. She sold her home, moved to Blowing Rock, and began writing the books God gave her to write.