Our Own Precious Places

Our Own Precious Places

There are places where we’ve all left pieces of ourselves behind. Memories either bloom to burst like the plum tree did for so many years or fester all quiet in a dark place. Cuz so much depends on sunlight, don’t it? , Our place is what ground us; it is what we come home to. It can also confine us, ultimately preventing us from becoming our best selves. Set in rural Illinois and voiced by seven different protagonists, Our Own Precious Places explores this dichotomy of place - how it both comforts and constrains us. It delves into the lives of the Owens family as they grapple with the ordinary events that make up a life, and shows how one act of violence can shake a family down to its very roots. Viola, the matriarch, opens the narrative with how she met her husband Frank, and how each of her six children were born into their proper places in her family. In turn, from youngest to oldest, Viola’s children - Nellie, Teeny, Chester, John Robert, Alma and Margaret - tell their stories of how they came to find their own places in this family and in the state of Illinois, amidst the turmoils of war and lies and infidelity and heartache. Viola returns at the end to lay bare an old secret that will rock the foundation of the family and forever alter what it truly means to find a place of one’s own amidst the calamity of being human, even in a quiet place where cornstalks outnumber humans, a thousand to one.