127 Followers
155 Following
bettie

Bettie's Books

A Stuga On the Cusp of the Orust Riviera, tucked away next to a hobbit hole in the woods.

They Have Oak Trees in North Carolina

They Have Oak Trees in North Carolina - Sarah Wooley

bookshelves: play-dramatisation, north-americas, mystery-thriller, re-read, spring-2010

Recommended for: Radio 4 listeners
Read on April 19, 2010


** spoiler alert ** Sarah Wooley's suspenseful drama about a marriage in crisis, a split-second decision and the choices we make to try to ensure our future happiness.

In 1986, Ray and Eileen's five-year-old son Patrick vanishes in Florida. 22 years later, a good-looking American named Clay arrives in their small village, claiming to be their missing son.


Review of the stage play from The Stage

It is quite startling to think that Sarah Wooley’s third work for the stage was written prior to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. For, in the shadow of that event and its continuing lack of resolution, the play takes on a strange and very immediate poignancy.

Rather than dealing with the actual abduction of a child, They Have Oak Trees in North Carolina tells the story of a young man returning to his parents, 22 years after he vanished while they were on holiday in Florida.

Interestingly, Wooley’s piece chooses to focus on the story of the parents rather than the abductee, how this terrible event has impacted on their lives and what it has done to their relationship as husband and wife.

Their long-lost son’s reappearance drives a wedge between the two, as the father Ray is unwilling to believe that the American stranger in front of him is the son he lost two decades ago, while mother Eileen takes the young man into her heart immediately.

The play’s greatest achievement is that it confounds expectations - what starts off as a study in family politics, reveals itself as an engaging and well-plotted thriller, as the blanks of the stranger’s past are slowly filled in.