MOONEY

A blunt to bald, past to present reflection of the dramas played out behind the scenes of small town life, in upper New York state, this converts the constants of life and death through the eyes of Timothy Mooney, Funerals and Furniture. From Mooney's laying out of Miss Aggie, the schoolteacher Preacher Penny would have liked to have had, this goes back to other scandals unknown but not unsuspected- returns to the present with the story of Johnny, Mooney's foster son, whose mother, a good woman though once a whore, had died in bearing him. And with Johnny's love for Mary, who had been knocked up by the hired man on her uncle's farm, there is his conflict between his desire to become a doctor and his desire to marry his girl, abruptly ended by his accidental death... Relying on strong sentiments and passions, this strikes at familiar frailties and honest feelings, but is perhaps too forthright for censorious conservatives.