Guardians Green

About the Book

GUARDIANS GREEN is a rural novel of natural initiation.  It relates the tale of a young man's investigation of the alternative history of his region. Under the direction of an elderly academic, he delves into a study of the coordinated system of ancient megaliths and earthen structures that dot the New England landscape and have mystified people centuries.  As they research these structures and the folklore that surrounds them, they must sift through the conflicting and fantastic claims made to explain the origin and purpose of the man-made caverns and standing stones.

This book exposes the societal and cultural forces that exist in small towns everywhere, and how these impose roles and opportunities on their inhabitants.  Further, it studies the systems of belief that both inspire and limit people's imaginations.  It tries to answer the question: How do we know what to believe?

The narrative explores the emotional and intellectual development of the first-person narrator, how he matures in relationships and knowledge. Think of it as a small town X-Files, Carlos Castaneda meets Carolyn Chute; a study of a past that may or may not have existed, and a present that may soon not exist; a paean to the nobility of the agricultural peasantry that draws a line through history to bind the ancient with the modern by their reverent understanding of the wisdom of the earth, contrasted to the current pollution-promoting ethos that focuses entirely on bottom-line considerations.

This novel alternates between naturalism and magical realism in its depiction of the mundane interpenetrating the ethereal.  The prose is a colloquial, yet often lyrical, rhapsody to the world it describes.

About the Author

Jim Melodini was born in Pennsylvania in 1950, and has lived in Vermont since 1967, where he still does peasant labor doing almost anything involving trees. He has had articles and short stories published in various literary and regional magazines since 1989, including three of the first four chapters of this book. He is currently at work on a historical novel about alchemy.