Set in the fictitious town of Harrison, Texas and based partly on the childhood of playwright Horton Foote's father and the courtship and marriage of his parents, “The Orphans’ Home Cycle" spans the lives of three families over three decades.
The Story of a Family begins with the turmoil of World War I and ends with the characters looking to the future of their family and land. It includes the plays 1918, Cousins and The Death of Papa.
What Is the Story of The Orphans’ Home Cycle: The Story of a Family?
In the final section of Horton Foote’s trilogy of nine hour-long plays, hero Horace Robedaux, now 20 years old, is happily married and the doting father of a baby girl. The first play, 1918, centers on the flu epidemic that sweeps Harrison, Texas, with devastating consequences for everyone in town. The second play, Cousins, takes place seven years later and finds Horace, now the owner of a clothing store, and his wife Elizabeth visiting his hospitalized mother and spoiled sister in Houston amid financial pressure from the failing cotton crop. The trilogy ends with The Death of Papa (set in 1928), in which the event referred to in the title, the death of Elizabeth’s wealthy father, sends shock waves through the extended family.