Toronto-based White Pine Pictures is teaming up with Stratford, ON-based Ballinran Entertainment to develop and produce a new limited series, based on Richard B. Wright’s novel Clara Callan.

Set in the Great Depression, the six-episode, one-hour drama will follow the lives of two sisters on different paths trying to find their place in a male-dominated world.

Producers on the project include White Pine president Peter Raymont, head of scripted development Karynn Austin, Ballinran president and exec producer Craig Thompson and Richard Whelan, who previously adapted the novel as a screenplay.

The series is anticipated to film in southwestern Ontario, though production details have yet to be announced.

Clara Callan won the Giller prize, the Trillium Book Award and the Governor-General’s Literary Award for fiction in 2001. The following year, the novel picked up awards for author of the year and book of the year from the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Awards. The rights to the novel were optioned by Ballinran from The Alpern Group.

This is the most recent collaboration between Ballinran and White Pine, which signed a memorandum of understanding in April with China’s CTV Golden Bridge International Media Group to jointly develop a slate of documentary projects over the next couples of years.