Letter From America    by Liam Howard

Featured in the 2010 Festival

Synopsis:

It's Friday morning and while Thady and Mary Harrington look forward to the 'coming home' of their long lost brother Jimmy on Sunday, their father's health is fading fast. The question now is, can he hold on until his estranged son arrives?

They haven't spoken in thirty years, not since Jimmy left the family home after a row with his father. That was 1927, three years after his mother died and just three months after his father had married again.

The new bride was Maggie Keating - a woman of similar age to Jimmy, his brother Thady and their sister Mary. Jimmy Harrington's name had scarcely been mentioned in the family home in those thirty years, his father flatly refusing to discuss anything about his leaving.