A Tragedy in the Mountains

By Larry Porter

This script is based on the true-life story of Nancy Kerley, a fifty-five year old, frail
woman who was ordered by her son-in-law to take her two-and-a-half year old granddaughter and go to the County Home in Haywood County, North Carolina to
live, since he could no longer support them.
She came back to his cabin without the baby and professed to have given her away.
Several weeks later, the girl was found in a cave, believed to have been placed there alive
and starved to death.
Nancy signed a plea bargain but never admitted she did this. She spent fifteen years of a thirty year sentence at Raleigh State Prison for hard labor. She was released at age seventy in 1929 and went on to live to age ninety-four.
There are still many relatives in the area and the case continues to bring much
controversy among local citizens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Larry Porter
• Release date: Apr 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301021741

Larry Porter

Larry Porter has been writing since 1976, when he had his second project, a children’s play, Treehouse, produced in Atlanta, Ga. He has written fourteen full-length plays. Another, The Gospel According to Jesus, was produced in Asheville, NC. He has written numerous short stories, eight novels including Chance Mountain, Ivan the Backward Man, True Globalization, The Carousel, The Blue Barrel, The Visitor, and After America: Rebuilding. He has a memoir, Self-Storage Business and a collection of short stories titled Heaven? dealing with the afterlife. He has written four screenplays. His latest project is writing history in verse. A compilation of four epic poems titled History in Verse includes The Experiment, a history of the US, The Reconstruction of a Nation, a history of the Civil War, The Quest for the West, a history of the settling of the US west, and The Sixties, a history of the decade of the 1960s in the US. Look for a new series of totalitarians of the twentieth century coning soon. He lives in the North Carolina Mountains where he continues to write.

Book preview

A TRAGEDY IN THE MOUNTAINS

The story of Nancy Kerley

By Larry Porter

Copy right 2013 Larry Porter

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Based on the true story of Nancy Kerley, sent to prison in Raleigh, NC in 1914, for the murder of her granddaughter, Roberta Putnam, in Haywood County, NC.

CAST

Nancy Kerley - 55 years old, frail looking at ninety-five pounds, but a tough old bird, used to working hard all her life. Wears a plain dress and clodhopper type shoes.

Will Putnam - late teens, early twenties, Nancy’s son-in-law. Wears bib overalls with longjohns underneath and boots.

Lizzy Putnam – Nancy’s daughter, early twenties, small girl, seven months pregnant, mother of two. Her dress fits tight. It is a very plain everyday dress. They can’t afford to get anything for her pregnancy.

Sheriff Jack Carver - a robust man, wears a flannel shirt and jeans WITH suspenders. He does not have a pistol strapped to his side (no stereotypes). In the first scene he is 75 years old with a cane and is hunched over. He always wears a straw fedora.

Reverand Fincher – tall, lanky, long hair, wears black suit. He’s bald except for two tufts of hair, one on each side of his head.

Lawyer Black - Seen only from behind in dim light. He can be played by another male character.

Laura Lee Fincher – early twenties, plain cotton dress. Can be played by Nancy.

Chorus - used over a PA system, chants the thoughts of the community population. This chorus can be recorded by the cast to be played later, throughout the play.

Act I

Takes place in a rough hewn log cabin containing bare bones furnishings: a table and a couple chairs, a counter with a pan for washing dishes, a fireplace with a kettle hanging in it for boiling water and such. There are no kitchen cabinets, just a couple shelves with all the kitchen tools that exist, plates, cups, a few pots and pans. A double burner potbelly stove serves for cooking meals. A curtain hangs to indicate the bedroom.

Scene 3 – in the woods with a big rock to