Mercer series
Salt-Water Moon
David Benson French
I intend to read the text but can claim to have seen the play performed live in the back yard of a heritage home in Trinity Newfoundland with the lad playing Jacob Mercer seated on a swing attached to a tree in that yard. Nothing could have made it more authentic. Seems the performance was June 13, 2010.
What I had not realized until I started reading the texts is that this play occurs 20 years before the first in the series in time when Mary and Jacob are their sons' age.
The author began a long tradition of Newfies leaving home for Toronto and making a career of writing about home and the immigrant experience. French was 11 when Newfoundland voted 51% to join Canada in 1949 a month before I was born.
The two plays that follow this one are not available in e-book form. 1949 and Soldier's Heart.
To the play. It's been nearly 14 years but I have a sense that the version I saw in Trinity was an adaptation. The basics:
The boy who left home to seek his fortune come back to woo the gal he left behind him. The fact her wedding to another man is pending added urgency to his mission. Having now read the two plays that are the after history we know he was successful. Alas his interactions with his own sons proved history repeating itself.
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