In a Northern Landscape.

by Timothy Mason

The play takes place in a Minnesota farming community in the 1920s, where Samuel Bredahl, a young college student, lives with his puritanical, Bible quoting mother; his dryly academic father, who is a professor of philosophy at the local college; and his sensitive, restless sister, Emma. The setting shows a burned-out farmhouse, once the Bredahl home, and now a chilling reminder of the cataclysmic events which, as told in flashbacks, underscore the action of the play. Bored and isolated, Samuel and Emma are drawn ever more closely together and apart from their stern parents and Samuel's boorish fellow students. When Emma's cherished rabbits are torn apart by the wild dogs which roam the countryside she turns to her brother for consolation, and it is her public declaration of the love which follows that leads to the crucial events which foreshadow the play in which the outraged townspeople incinerate the Bredahl home, driving Samuel into the jaws of the wild dogs, and leaving his family to ponder their roles in these tragic happenings and the lifelong retribution which they must face as a consequence.

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Tim Mason is a playwright whose work has been produced in New York City, throughout the United States, and around the world. Among the awards he has received are a Kennedy Center Award, the Hollywood Drama-Logue Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Rockefeller Foundation grant. In addition to his dramatic plays, he wrote the book for Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical, which had two seasons on Broadway and tours nationally every year. He is the author of the young adult novel The Last Synapsid. The Darwin Affair was his first adult novel.

source: Amazon