THE STORY: NIGHT DANCE, opens in 1945. Genevieve’s husband, Wayne, is due home any day now from World War II which has recently ended. Porter, who has made the Navy his life, is already home, enjoying Roma’s cooking and catching up on the news. Neal had not qualified to go to war and remained at home, running the store, and running interference between the two important women in his life. Taw has returned to teaching and, much to Roma’s dismay, has not borne a child. The war took its toll on the town, but one more phone call leaves Neal to tell of Wayne’s death, by uninformed sniper fire, to Genevieve and to Wayne’s father. Genevieve’s despair overtakes her as she takes her own life, but not without appearing to Neal before her soul departs, in a beautiful farewell to friendship and life. What Neal does not see, but Genevieve achieves is her loving reunion with Wayne. The loss of both his friends forces Neal to enter into an adult part of his life he tried to avoid, but the tragedy helps draw his family closer together.
The second in the poetic trilogy New Music, which chronicles the Avery family and their friends through thirty-seven years in a North Carolina town. Elegant melancholy follows these people as they live through the Depression, WWII and Vietnam, and a few private wars of their own.
“…Reynolds Price proves a born playwright in a poignant trilogy about thwarted hopes in a small North Carolina town.” —Time Magazine.
