Joe Turner’s Come and Gone | Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

At a glance:

Author: August Wilson
First Published: 1988
Type of Work: Play
Type of Plot: Psychological realism
Time of Work: 1911
Setting: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Principal Characters: Seth Holly, Bertha Holly, Bynum Walker, Rutherford Selig, Herald Loomis
Genres: Social realism, Drama
Subjects: African Americans, Values, Family or family life, Husbands, Self-discovery, United States or Americans, Wives, Magic or magicians, 1910’s, Hotels, motels, or inns, Separation, Songs or songwriters
Locales: Pittsburgh, PA

Many of the characters in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone are searching for something. This motif thus provides an important organizing principle for a play that does not aspire to tightness of structure. The story the play tells finds its center, however, in Herald Loomis’ search for Martha, the wife he has not seen in ten years. This search brings Loomis, with his eleven-year-old daughter Zonia, in the fall of 1911 to the boardinghouse in Pittsburgh owned by Seth Holly and his wife Bertha.

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone | Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

At a glance:

The Play

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