Polly Ann

Summary

A soot-smudged Cinderella in a nowhere tavern, Polly-Ann polishes pewter while moonlight drips through warped shutters onto her cracked boots. A rackety theatrical caravan rattles into the square; greasepaint gods strut, and she—half-child, half-moth—flutters toward the footlights, believing love can speak in rhyming couplets. Enter Howard Straightlane, city-bred exile, dispatched by a steel-magnate patriarch to teach fractions to farm boys and sweat the gin from his own veins. One brawl beneath the wagon’s lanterns later, the actor’s serpentine charm is unmasked; Howard’s fist writes the moral, Polly’s gasp the punctuation. Yet bloodlines twist: a solicitor’s letter reveals the barmaid is heiress to a gilded dynasty, niece to the very titan who banished his son. Cue drawing-room daggers: a silk-clad cousin, eyes hard as chandelier crystal, demands the fortune for her own dowry. Railcars steam, loyalties invert, and in a final tableau of crinoline and contrition the patriarch folds the lovers into a forgiveness that smells of cedar money and thawing winter.

Synopsis

Young Polly-Ann works in a small town inn as a maidservant. A troupe of actors comes to town and the innocent girl falls in love with one of its members. Howard Straightlane is sent to the small town by his father, to work as a schoolteacher in hopes of smartening up the young man from his wild ways. Howard soon meets Polly-Ann and saves her from the unscrupulous actor, meanwhile Howard's father has discovered Polly-Ann is his niece and sends for her. Another niece, greedily tries to force Polly to give her, all of her share of the family fortune. Upon hearing this the father insists that Polly return and since she and Howard have fallen in love, his son is now forgiven.