Dust and Roses

In Depression-era Kansas, a few have never experienced the hard times . . . . Sara McGurk has a comfortable life: an exciting boyfriend, a good home, and a responsible job. She answers the fan mail for her father’s radio show. And a broadcasting network has just picked Pastor McGurk’s program, Heaven and Earth, for a national debut. Sam McGurk is about to become a celebrity. But Sara gets some unexpected news of her own. She is with child. The façade of her easy life is about to implode. The result is banishment. From her own home. In desperation, Sara turns to her boyfriend. This leads to a violent argument. Larry leaves her bleeding and abandoned on an empty road in front of a forbidding limestone house in the middle of nowhere. Deliverance comes in the form of a strange group of social outcasts. The house was once a county asylum, now a poor farm. The people there take her in. Now, Sara must heal from her wounds while coping with her fellow residents and Gloria Eisner, the recalcitrant matron of the tenant house. But her biggest questions are what will happen to her baby, and will she ever find peace again with her father? After butting heads with Gloria, the matron gives Sara the demanding job of caring for the poor farm’s infirmary. She gets some help from the house’s youngest residents: a feeble-minded boy of 16, and a mute young woman. The three become a team. The silence of the country is mind numbing. Sara longs for the bustle of the city, the clatter of cars, and the sound of news and music. So she writes to her father’s show as another resident asking for a radio. Her letter is one among hundreds her father’s mailroom receives each week. A futile gesture. But Pastor Sam McGurk needs something to spark his network debut. He needs a story that will captivate his new, nationwide audience. For this, he turns to his staff in the mailroom to find him an attention-getting letter that would launch his premiere. And he finds one from a young woman on a poor farm. Beyond the horizon, forces are approaching. Will Sara come to terms with her father? Or will she and her refuge be left devastated like the aftermath of a Kansas dust storm? Tune in.