Howard Frank Mosher, a novelist who has devoted his career to weaving tales set in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, is terminally ill, he announced in a Facebook post on Sunday.
What Mosher, 74, who has lived in the Northeast Kingdom for 52 years, the last 40 in Irasburg, initially thought was a respiratory infection is in fact “a very aggressive and all but untreatable form of cancer,” he wrote in the post.
“In less than two months … I have gone from feeling pretty good to being in hospice care.”
Mosher’s announcement spurred both expressions of sadness for his failing health and gratitude for his work from his friends and fans this week.
Among the hundreds of Facebook commenters was Lisa Ladd, of Thetford. Ladd met Mosher at Booktopia, a gathering of readers and writers at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vt.
“It was a lovely evening, and we learned much about his life in the Northeast Kingdom, his love of family, especially Phillis (his wife), and his terrific ability to spin a tale,” Ladd said in an email on Wednesday.
“As a transplanted Californian (now in the Upper Valley almost 30 years), Howard’s stories of Kingdom County really helped me learn to appreciate Vermonters and their way of life. His sense of history, and of time passing comes through each of his books, and I have purchased all of them, for myself, and others too.”
Mosher’s sense of place also has been important to Northeast Kingdom filmmaker Jay Craven, who has made four feature films and a short based on Mosher’s books — in a collaboration that dates back to 1982.
Mosher’s work fit squarely into Craven’s ideas of blending culture and community in the Northeast Kingdom. Craven, who lives in Peacham, Vt., founded the St. Johnsbury-based organization Catamount Arts in 1975 as a way to bring independent films to people in rural parts of Vermont and New Hampshire who otherwise would not have had access to them.
“It was natural for me to consider Howard,” Craven said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “He was the writer of the Northeast Kingdom.”
In his work, Mosher depicts the Northeast Kingdom as a wild frontier: “An outlaw culture surviving a bit in the margins,” Craven said.
Mosher’s books include characters who are larger than life, address questions of the land and development and convey a sense of the past being present. All of these elements come together to depict the Kingdom as “a bit mythic with flawed, but human characters,” Craven said.
“He set out to gather and observe and render and sort of work with what he found there,” Craven said.
Mosher is also known for his generosity toward other writers, Craven said. He has offered to read others’ work and offer comments and quotations for book jackets. Craven said Mosher encouraged and financially supported Catamount Arts’ 1991 publication of Leland Kinsey’s first book of poems, Northern Almanac, knowing that once Kinsey had one book published, others would follow.
“Howard just wanted to make a difference,” Craven said.
Kinsey, a former student of Mosher’s, died last fall; as did David Budbill, another popular Northeast Kingdom-based poet.
The Kingdom has also been home to the late poet Galway Kinnell, essayist and novelist Ted Hoagland and novelist Don Bredes, who created the screenplay adaptations of Mosher’s Where the Rivers Flow North and A Stranger in the Kingdom for Craven’s films
Mosher is being cared for by his wife, Phillis, and his daughter, Annie, who is visiting from Tennessee. He also has a son, Jake. Mosher’s mother, who was in her 100s, died last weekend.
In his Facebook post, Mosher said the cancer stems from radiation treatments he received nine years ago for prostate cancer.
“I am grateful for those nine good years,” he wrote.
While opportunities to visit with the author in person may be dwindling, chances to read his work are not. In a Facebook post the day before the announcement about his health, Mosher told followers that his 14th book, Points North, will be published this winter. Phillis will keep his Facebook followers up to date as the publication date nears, he wrote.
“I am happy to leave you all with the gift of what may be my best book in Points North,” he wrote. “Enjoy it with my compliments.”
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
Correction
Howard Frank Mosher has lived in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom for 52 years, the last 40 in the town of Irasburg. An earlier version of this story misstated the length of his time in Irasburg.
