The Ghosts of Hawthorn, Missouri

Eric Redmond and Daniel Wright were two adopted brothers who grew up together, and died a world apart. They met in the middle of an American heartland that seemed perpetually in decline: shambolic trailer parks, a meth epidemic, and indifference between neighbors, but with the refuge of religion. Here, communities of blue-collar workers resigned to a lifetime of beige depression - themselves descendants of two centuries of cultural calamities, armed only with the faint hope of one day living their dreams - give up their anxieties and weekly tithes to the Lord as well as to a charismatic pastor, Eric’s father Harold Redmond. Things seem to be going well in Hawthorn, but its underbelly still thrives: drugs, crime and grim small-town secrets. Daniel and Eric’s bond is broken somewhere in the murky depths of the dysfunctional family unit -or does it continue to endure? Horrifying, humorous, irreverent and tragic, The Ghosts of Hawthorn, Missouriis a work that bursts with pain, and with life.