Refraction of Light

On the day World War II ends, another war begins. Joe Taylor, an African-American veteran decides he wants to marry Nettie French, a childhood sweetheart, and buy the house belonging to Rose Beauchamp. Rose is a white teacher who has befriended both Nettie and Joe and encouraged their friendship and academic aspirations. Rose's prejudice rears its head and her reluctance to sell her house to Joe sets in motion a chain of events that threatens to destroy all their futures. Harry Rosen, a Jewish immigrant from Nazi Germany, enters their lives and helps them find their way home. The setting is the living room of a graceful old home in Berkley, Virginia. A stained glass window made by Nettie's mother, Lily, as a gift to Rose, is a designer's delight. Lily combined pieces of glass from baby bottles, eye-glasses, plates, and jewelry to create a symbol of the play's multicultural mix. Through this window, Rose, Nettie, Joe, and Harry find comfort, joy, pain, redemption; and, finally, the reality of their own prejudices. Following the death of her mother in 1938, Nettie French, smart, sassy, African American and age 16, finds a new home with her mother's friend, Rose Beauchamp, a white, Southern teacher in Berkley, Virginia who enhances the education of young African Americans in her home. In Act 1, Nettie finds the love of her life, Joe Taylor, and a friendship with a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany. Joe returns from World War II, mature and changed by his experiences as a soldier. Joe upsets the equilibrium when he wants to buy Miss Beauchamp's house and marry Nettie; Rose can't adjust to changing racial and social norms and equivocates about the sale; In an impulsive rage, Joe leaves to pursue college and a career, assuming Nettie will follow him in a few days. Nettie, however, is pregnant and disappears, not wanting to hinder Joe's life. Joe's first year in college is unsuccessful, and he returns to Berkley to find Nettie, only to discover that she is missing, and Harry now resides in the house to take care of Rose Beauchamp, who is failing both physically and mentally. Her decline has been exacerbated by her own guilt leading to the disappearance of Nettie; her decline is further exacerbated when she learns that Nettie was pregnant when she left. Joe doesn't know if he can ever forgive Nettie, everything about the house reminds him of her. The house brings up memories for Harry, too, memories he is still too haunted by and too ashamed to share. Ultimately, Nettie hears that Joe is looking for her and returns to the only home she has ever known, having lost her child in childbirth, to find Joe. The loss has changed Nettie; she is no longer the naïve and trusting girl planning to follow her Prince Charming. She is a woman who has faced the worst life has to offer and survived and now must face revealing the loss of their child to Joe. At first glad to find Nettie, Joe is mortally wounded to discover that he has had and lost a child without ever knowing about it; he doesn't know if he can forgive Nettie for keeping that from him. In the final scene, Rose, delusional, hears the argument and enters but "sees" both Joe and Nettie as they appeared in Scene 1, teenagers arriving for their lessons at her desk. Joe tries to confront Rose with reality, but Nettie goes along with the fantasy. Finally, Joe must decide whether to hang on to his own view of the world, which has him at the center or to join Rose and Nettie in a "lesson" in front of the window.