Academics The Story

The spring 2012 Movies from Marlboro project will be based on Northern Borders, Howard Frank Mosher's award-winning 1994 novel. Young Aus­ten Kittredge is sent by his father to live on his grandparents' Vermont farm.  It's 1948.  The farm in Lost Nation Hollow becomes a magical place for Austen, full of eccentric people -- like his reprobate second cousin and stubborn but loving grandparents, whose difficult marriage is known as the Forty Years War.  Austen experiences wild adventures and uncovers long-festering family secrets. An enchanting and sometimes startling coming-of-age story, Northern Borders evokes the sublime and ironic imagery of rugged Northeast Kingdom living--the rough-hewn county fair, a contentious one-room schoolhouse, and an annual family reunion and Shakespeare performance.

Northern Borders was previously in development by Academy Award-winning producer Jake Eberts (Gandhi, The Killing Fields, Dances With Wolves, The Illusionist) for actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

"A contempo­rary classic." - Los Angeles Times.

"A touching and unforgettable portrait of a people and time."  -- The New York Times.

"Wonderful, by turns touching and funny, always exact, and graced by undeceived love for his (Mosher's) land and people."  -- Tobias Wolff (This Boy's Life)

"A story full of marvels.  Mosher offers us a landscape, both natural and human, worth knowing, worth loving, worth believing in, even as he reminds us that it's already gone."  -- Richard Russo (Empire Falls, Straight Man, Nobody's Fool).