Novelist Price (A Generous Man, Love and Work, The Surface of Earth) returns to the scene--and the characters--of his first fiction, the acclaimed A Long and Happy Life (1962). ""The play is not the novel dramatized,"" his preface tells us, but the North Carolina, 1957 events are the same: Rosacoke Mustian loves roving motorcycle salesman Wesley Beavers, gets pregnant by him, and maybe manages to ease him into fidelity with the intensity of her devotion. Frankly dated materials, a large cast, and a dearth of dramatic action (notwithstanding nude scenes) may augur ill for commercial theatrical potential, but the wisdom in the delicate dialect and the actability of the Rosacoke-Wesley scenes should lead to university stagings. (Devotees of A Long and Happy Life will want to read Early Dark to compare Price's angle on ""the same few people"" now ""seen by a different man who stands elsewhere and sees otherwise."")