Lanford Wilson
At the end of World War II, Matt Friedman, a Jewish immigrant who has spent his life keeping others at a distance, returns to the small town where he first met Sally Talley. Nothing like her conservative Protestant family and neighbors, Sally is a nurse with deep misgivings about the country’s future. After a lifetime of believing they’ll never truly belong in the world around them, Matt has worked up the courage to ask Sally for her hand, and convince her that they do belong—together.
On July 4, 1944, Matt Friedman, a 40+ Jewish accountant and in love for the first time in his life, drives 200 miles to the heart of Missouri farm country to propose to Sally Talley, ten years younger and seemingly not interested. Having been met at the door by Sally’s shotgun toting brother—Jews not welcome here—Matt takes refuge in a Victorian folly of a boathouse on the nearby river, where Sally finds him. Cue moonlight and music (waltz, please), willows and woods. Can one enchanted evening change the course of two lives? Once upon a time—there was hope in the land.
Geri Riordan is adopted, half-Vietnamese, eighteen, and a piano prodigy. She also feels as if she doesn't know who she really is, and when her adopted father dies, she begins to search for her biological father.
Ken Talley is 32, strong, goodlooking and a Vietnam vet with both legs shot off seven years earlier. He is somewhat cynical. His lover Jed is bigger and stronger, a gardner, a good listener. On Independence Day 1977 Ken's home in Lebanon Missouri is visted by the others. Much of their past relationships, pre- and post-Vietnam, must be pulled up and examined before any of them can decide their future.
