Institute History
Description
Duncan is a weird kid and everybody knows it. He knows it and can't seem to change it. His father knows it and doesn't like it one bit. His mother knew it and loved him for it. She was a weirdo too. Too bad she's dead.
THE MUDGE BOY is the story of Duncan, a fourteen year old misfit farm boy trying to fill the void and alleviate the numbness left by his mother's passing. Unable to let her go quite yet, Duncan mimics his dead mother. He talks in her voice at the dinner table and wears her nightgown to bed. Edgar, Duncan's, sixty year old distant father, doesn't understand the strange manifestations of his son's mourning. Why can't Duncan grieve like a normal person? Edgar becomes intent on laying down some new rules and turning his coddled son into someone who can take on the family farm.
Duncan must look beyond his father for comfort. He longs to make a connection with someone, anyone. Hopelessly naive, he rides around on his bicycle with his mother's pet chicken, unwittingly making himself a target of ridicule. Chicken Boy. The townies mock and harass him. Perry, an older boy with problems of his own, befriends Duncan, initiating him into the group.
Duncan's relationship with Perry gradually becomes secretive and dangerous as Perry reveals a hidden side of himself. His world takes a destructive turn when he tries to fit in, and the lines between friendship and love become blurred. In one fateful moment, he makes a heart-wrenching sacrifice, surrendering the last vestiges of his childhood and his weirdness, and taking the first steps towards becoming that man his father wants him to be.
THE MUDGE BOY is a modern American fable. It is the story of a father and son who lose the most important person in their life and ultimately find each other. A dark, yet often funny portrait of adolescence, it explores the humor and pain of growing up different in rural America.