THE STORY: Act One: Roots in a Parched Ground. When his father dies and his mother and sister move to Houston, Horace Robedaux is left behind in Harrison, Texas with his feuding relatives, the Robedauxs and the Thorntons.Act Two: Convicts. Horace take

Act One: "1918." The 1918 Flu Epidemic strikes Harrison, and the Robedaux family is hit particularly hard. Act Two: "Cousins." Horace is called to Corella's bedside in Houston when she faces another operation. Meanwhile, as everyone attempts to sort through their complex family trees, the past haunts his cousins Minnie Curtis and Lewis Higgins. Act Three: "The Death of Papa." The death of Elizabeth's father sends the Vaughn and Robedaux households into a tailspin while Horace struggles through the turbulent economy to keep his store open and support his family.

THE STORY: Act One: The Widow Claire. On the night before he leaves Harrison for business school in Houston, Horace calls on the widow Claire Ratliff. Over the course of the evening he becomes further entangled in the lives of Claire and her young child

Three plays of courtship and marriage trace the currents of family life back to their source in the struggle of the human spirit.

Four plays dramatize the trials of Horace Robedaux, whose father's sudden death places Horace between his father's and his mother's families.

THE STORY: After the death of his alcoholic father, and his mother's remarriage, young Horace Robedaux remained in Harrison, Texas, clerking in a dry goods store. When his mother invites him to visit her and his teenage sister, Lily, in Houston, Ho

THE STORY: The play begins by introducing the next generation of Robedauxs in the person of Horace's son, Horace Jr., who comes home from school to find that his maternal grandfather, Henry Vaughn, has died suddenly of a heart attack. From this poi