The Widow Claire Book

After returning to Harrison, Texas, from his disastrous visit with his mother and sister (and his new stepfather) in Houston, Horace Robedaux has moved into a local boarding house prior to returning to Houston to take a six week business course. During his brief stay at home he falls suddenly and passionately in love with an attractive but rather self-centered young widow, Claire, who, as it happens, already has several suitors, not to mention two rather overactive small children. From the first it is apparent that Horace's hopes are futile, and the other boarders—mostly cigar smoking, poker players—take delight in ribbing Horace about the Widow Claire's "reputation" and the mischief he can expect from her captious offspring. Their warnings prove to be all too true, and the gentle Horace is even drawn by the widow's young son into a disastrous (for him) fistfight with another of her suitors. As the play ends Horace is reconciled to yet another defeat in his young life, and prepares to depart for Houston a sadder but, hopefully, wiser person. And the audience is left with a haunting, eloquent evocation of a time and place where life may have seemed simpler but was, in truth, as filled with compromises, disappointments and the need for strength of mind and spirit as our own more complex times.