Flesh And Blood (Hanley) Book

THE STORY: As described by the Washington, D.C. Evening Star: Here was the family of an aging steelworker, living in a New York tenement about to be torn down, getting ready to mark the departure of his brother and the arrival of a new year‚¬¦The steelworker, a happy-go-lucky type all his life, was not quick to anger. He was troubled by his brother's departure after all these years; the family was falling apart. He questioned himself, too, and his part in the death of a young steelworker. Were old memories good enough? He had lost one son in a war, another had lost both hands in battle and the shock had curtailed his mind. Was he good enough any more for the job he loved? The brother was leaving to die, but unwilling to leave without taking something with him that was his. So after a few drinks he revealed, to the youngest daughter (Kim Darby) that he was really her father and that it had happened when he and her mother thought her husband dead in a shipwreck‚¬¦The girl, shocked by the revelation, runs out into the night and it is her all-night absence which author Hanley employs to develop his mosaic of the accommodations that people make in order to survive as a unit. Presented nationwide on the NBC Television Network with an all-star cast headed by Edmond O'Brien, Kim Stanley, and E.G. Marshall, this powerful and affecting drama, which probes into the inner secrets and stresses of a family on the verge of breaking apart, is filled with the sensitivity, insight and dramatic excitement which have placed the author in the forefront of our theatre's outstanding younger writers. ‚¬¦an intense, absorbing play‚¬¦ - Chicago American. The aim was high, the execution was simply superb. - Washington, D.C. Evening Star. ‚¬¦a compassionate drama about a close-knit family that undergoes a searing, self-revelatory experience. - Chicago Daily News.