A strong melodrama flavor permeates this plot where love and good overcome conflict, setting this play about family values and teenage choices above many in its class. Clover Kilcannon is happy with her simple life until the young man she loves gets a job at the country club and becomes enamored of Iris Grant, a beautiful, rich socialite from the "right side" of the river.

From its title to its final scene, The River Between is rich in symbolism and metaphor. Ford Ainsworth, the author of several other notable plays including his widely acclaimed Persephone, formed its varied complex characters with an understanding of humanity developed in a lifetime of working closely with people as a teacher, an artistic director, an author, and a family man. The play is being published posthumously with the consent and help of his widow, Alice Ainsworth.

Although the play is set in Texas, with just a little alteration its locale can easily be changed to almost any place—any place where there is envy, jealousy, inequality, prejudice, hate, love, hope, and dreams. The time is the middle of the Great Depression, when a $5 bill was as big and elusive as a $100 or $500 bill is today. But little else about life as we live it has changed.

Three acts; Set, back yard and porch of a dilapidated shack; Time, 1937. For all groups.

Others by Ainsworth: The Bridge, Charity Case, Farewell to Galatea, The Sheep Thief (The Second Shepherd's Play)

See also: Plays About Social Issues, Plays About Personal Relationships