Northern Borders by Howard Frank Mosher

2020 Key Word Challenge - August (Kiss, Flower, When, Happy, North, Right)
Oldest Book on TBR

Okay, so its not THE oldest book on my TBR, but its darn close!

We picked this book up on the recommendation of our favorite book seller from Sanibel Island, FL. Sadly Joan has passed (the new bookstore wasn't the same after she was gone) and we no longer take annual trips to Sanibel, so I started this book already feeling nostalgic.

Summary from Goodreads: Northern Borders is Mosher’s nostalgic novel of life in northern Vermont’s Kingdom County, as told by a man remembering his boyhood. In 1948 six-year-old Austen Kittredge III leaves his widowed father to live with his paternal grandparents on their farm in the township of Lost Nation. Escapades at the county fair, doings at the annual family reunion and Shakespeare performance, and conflicts at the one-room schoolhouse are all recounted lovingly in this enchanting coming-of-age story filled with luminous memories and the deepest of childhood secrets, as a boy is molded into a man.

My nostalgia continued as I read about this young boy growing up on his grandparent's farm in northern Vermont. Okay, okay I was a young gal who spent some weekends on her grandparent's farm in northern Ohio, but there were still some relatable moments as I read about Austin's experiences.

Such as "Haying was maddeningly hot work. Chaff got down my shirt collar and up under my pants cuffs and in my mouth and nose, causing my eyes to run steadily. The days were as long as they were hot..." Oh yeah, I suffered this same thing every summer for many of my growing up years!

And I loved Shakespeare being represented with Rose's annual productions on the farm (with her taking the lead of course): "Here Rose is again, now raging as Lear, now boasting as Falstaff, now agonizing over the bitter ironies of human existence as Hamlet. And once again I see her as Prospero..."

I felt the melancholy of grandpa "'The farms are all gone, The big woods are gone. The best of the hunting and fishing is gone. The kids,...have gown up and gone away and not come back.'", as our own family farm is not what it used to be and the next generation most likely will not be coming back to take it over so it will only live on in my memories.

Other Quotes: "I came upon crate after crate of books:...a pirated edition of Poe's tales with which, at about the age of nine, I would begin scaring the living daylights out of myself..."

""...being brave has nothing to do with being unafraid.'"