The smell of oil is in the air, and so is murder, when eighteen-year-old Eddie Tipton arrives in a small Texas town with his widowed mother in 1950. Eddie and his teacher mother take rooms in the home of Texas oil widow, Faye Ruth Collier, leading to a surprising relationship between Eddie and Faye Ruth. Eddie spends time with handyman, Ned Cotton and soon learns that Mrs. Collier’s late husband was murdered a few years earlier. Ned Cotton warns Eddie to stay away from Faye Ruth and to ignore the murder of Lawrence Collier. Eddie, of course, cannot resist.
Making his way in a new school, dodging the stigma of being the schoolteacher’s son, succumbing to the lure of his middle-aged landlady, Eddie is embroiled in dangerous adventures on all fronts. And then, Eddie suffers a devastating loss that spurs him to ratchet up his quest for answers and leads to a near-fatal showdown.
Sam Havens is Professor Emeritus in Drama at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. Havens founded the Drama Department where he teaches playwriting and screenwriting.
Havens has written fifteen plays with productions in the USA, Canada and Australia. His plays have been selected for showcase productions in New York City, Westport, Connecticut, Amherst, Massachusetts, and East Hampton, New York. He has received playwriting grants from the Ford Foundation and from the Texas Commission on Arts and Humanities. Three of Havens’ plays are published.
Havens taught playwriting and screenwriting for ten years in Rice University’s School of Continuing Studies.
In addition to writing and teaching, Havens performs voice-over narration for radio and TV commercials and industrial films. He is also an abstract artist and a consultant in presentation skills.
