This is the central volume in Horton Foote's remarkable nine-play Orphans' Home Cycle, in which the author chronicles the evolution of a family--the strengths that bind its members together and the strains that force them apart--and the cataclysmic changes in Southern society over twenty-six turbulent years. Beginning in 1902 with the death of the protagonist's father--a loss that sends twelve-year-old Horace Robedaux on an odyssey to the darkest corners of the heart--and ending in 1928 with another momentous funeral, Foote traces a lineage of loss and regeneration.
Caught in a conflict as old as society itself, Elizabeth Vaughn is at once drawn and propelled toward Horace Robedaux. The proud and wealthy Vaughns frown on their daughter's love for the orphaned clothing salesman, but the revolving mirrors of time turn and turn about, and both the Vaughns and the newly married Robedauxs are tested not only by their pride but also by the shadows of death and disease, and the more subtle pressures of their family's and their society's future.
The Orphans' Home Cycle (a title based on a poem by Marianne Moore) is a unique series of plays spanning thirty years in the lives of its central characters. Moving and complete as individual plays, the entire cycle is a panoramic and penetrating picture of American society during a crucial period in our history.

"A family is a remarkable thing, isn't it? You belong. And then you don't. It passes you by. Unless you start a family of your own." The last two plays of Horton Foote's Orphans' Home Cycle both expand and contract the circle of a family that unifies all nine of the plays. In Cousins, an operation on Horace Robedaux's mother reunites, in person and in memory, the many Robedaux relatives (one of whom speaks the lines quoted above), and in the almost comic proliferation of cousins that results, the orphaned Horace is joined across time and space to a family that seems never to end. The Death of Papa returns the cycle to its origins, with the death of Horace's father-in-law. Far from ending the story, however, Papa's death regenerates the complexity of families and their survival, as his son bravely but foolishly tries to assume control of the land that supports his family's life.

Horton Foote's uniquely personal style of screenwriting is at its peak in this collection of two Academy Award winners, To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies, and The Trip to Bountiful, a film widely named as one of 1985's best. "In an age when the lexicon of cinema is largely visual," noted Samuel G. Freedman in the New York Times Magazine, "Foote writes films. He stresses dialogue and character development rather than spectacle or even traditional narrative." Each of the three screenplays sprang from a different origin. One was adapted from the novel by Harper Lee, who later wrote, "If the integrity of a film adaptation is measured by the degree to which the novelist's intent is preserved, Mr. Foote's screenplay should be studied as a classic." Tender Mercies was conceived for the screen, and The Trip to Bountiful came from Foote's own stage and television play. While each demanded solutions to different cinematic problems, all are marked by Foote's own mastery of the screenwriting form, as well as his understanding of human relationships. All three show a modern Chekhov at work, revealing the deep currents of American society through the simplest details of daily life.

"In the beginning, there was no real plan, just a road trip that became a journey." In the years 1986 and 1987, Keith Carter and his wife, Patricia, visited one hundred small Texas towns with intriguing names like Diddy Waw Diddy, Elysian Fields, and Poetry. He says, "I tried to make my working method simple and practical: one town, one photograph. I would take several rolls of film but select only one image to represent that dot on my now-tattered map. The titles of the photographs are the actual names of the small towns. . . ." Carter created a body of work that evoked the essence of small-town life for many people, including renowned playwright and fellow Texan, Horton Foote. In 1988, Carter published his one town/one picture collection in From Uncertain to Blue, a landmark book that won acclaim both nationally and internationally for the artistry, timelessness, and universal appeal of its images--and established Carter as one of America's most promising fine art photographers.

Now a quarter century after the book's publication, From Uncertain to Blue has been completely re-envisioned and includes a new essay in which Carter describes how the search for photographic subjects in small towns gradually evolved into his first significant work as an artist. He also offers additional insight into his creative process by including some of his original contact sheets. And Patricia Carter gives her own perspective on their journey in her amplified notes about many of the places they visited as they discovered the world of possibilities from Uncertain to Blue.

In "Genesis of an American Playwright" Horton Foote, one of the greatest American playwrights of the twentieth century, reflects upon his journey from his childhood in Wharton, Texas, through his early experiences as an actor in the theatre, to his mature vocation as a playwright. All along the way, Foote carefully identifies the people and influences that shaped his character and nurtured his art. What is remarkable about this book is equally remarkable about his drama: he writes with an effortlessness that belies the intimacy of the art emanating from deep within. The stories are simply told, but complex in their resonance. Foote not only reveals his immediate professional world, but he also provides a running commentary on the changes in American culture. This book makes for as fascinating reading as it does compelling history. On December 20, 2000, President Bill Clinton conferred the National Medal of Arts on Texas dramatist, Horton Foote, and noted that Foote's six-decade-long, award-winning career established him as the nation's most prolific writer for stage, film, and television. Foote's many awards include two Academy Awards, an Emmy, a Burkey Award and the Screen Laurel Award from the Writers Guild of America, the Lucille Lortel Award, and his induction into both the Theatre Hall of Fame and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Without question, Horton Foote has enriched American literature with his unique writing style and his truthful examinations of the human condition. Besides "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "The Trip To Bountiful," Foote has written a score of notable plays, teleplays, and films.