• Fiction.

By Howard Frank Mosher. Houghton Mifflin, $24.

Grade: B

Plot in a nutshell: In his latest novel, Mosher's epic and eccentric characters match their storied and sprawling setting. Set in 1930, the novel revolves around the fictional Kingdom Mountain, a parcel straddling the border between Vermont and Canada and rich in native history, mythology and wildlife. As the final northern stop on the Underground Railroad, it stands as an unsullied link to America's early history and identity.

When a proposed highway to Quebec labeled "the connector" threatens to bore its way through the land, Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson, its sole resident and nominal proprietress, prepares for the biggest battle of her life. An eccentric naturalist, librarian, woodcarver, historian, hunter and schoolteacher, Kinneson enlists her disparate skills in the fight.

Meanwhile, she finds an ally and love interest in Henry Satterfield, a dashing Creole stunt pilot and "rainmaker" who crash-lands on the mountain's frozen lake, searching for a fabled golden treasure said to be hidden somewhere on the mountain.

Melding the rustic American folklore of Mark Twain with the serial adventure style of Robert Louis Stevenson, Mosher weaves an ambitious tale of fantasy, purloined treasure, heady romance and familial duty.

Sample of prose: Miss Jane's impassioned plea in court to save her mountain from development is one of the novel's most arresting scenes: "As I said at the outset, mountains are silent. Likewise, rivers, ponds and forests. I must speak for them. Kingdom Mountain has seen a great deal over the past three billion years. It stood watch as my great-grandfather Freethinker . . . barricaded it and the lakes it overlooks, during the War of 1812. . . . It was the site of Vermont's northernmost Underground Railroad Station. Guided by my grandfather, Quaker Meeting, hundreds of fugitives from the Southland passed over the mountain to Canada and freedom. . . . Let the mountain's last tale not be its own destruction at the hands of those with a shortsighted notion of progress."

Pros: Mosher weaves an impressive breadth of knowledge - naturalism, geography, literature, American history - into a fictional format.

Cons: The narrative style sometimes suffers from Mosher's erudition. Every character seems to share the author's own dense language and vocabulary, subtracting from the book's overall realism and dynamism.

Final word: This is an old-fashioned hunt for gold set against a majestic, untamed American wilderness.