Northern Borders

Looking back from adulthood, a man revisits his boyhood in this nostalgic novel set in Kingdom County, in northern Vermont. The story begins in 1948, when 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.

Much of the book follows the small events that shaped those years: misadventures at the county fair, the annual family reunion, a Shakespeare performance, and the conflicts that break out at the one-room schoolhouse. The narrator also recalls the private secrets of childhood, the kind a boy keeps from the adults around him.

Taken together, these episodes trace a boy's passage into manhood, in a coming-of-age story built from vivid recollection.