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Set in the mountains of North Carolina in 1870, the
play deals with a frontier family; father, mother and son, who work long
hours to wrest a living from the small farm they have bought from the
county. Unexpectedly an old woman appears, perhaps deranged, and
carrying a cowbell and a broken bit of mirror. They offer her food and
drink, and she talks of her youth—which was apparently spent on the very
farm which is now theirs. Years before, to ward off suitors, the woman
had declared that she would only marry a man who could take her to
Tennessee, but one man accepted her dare, selling off good bottom land
to do so. Now in her later years, she realizes that the new farm which
they carved from the wilderness was not in Tennessee at all, but only
seven miles distant over the hills.
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