Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 1713

Valley Song opens with The Author, a white man in his sixties representing Fugard himself, showing the audience a handful of ‘‘genuine Karoo pumpkin seeds,’’ describing the beauty and richness of the land in the Sneeuberg Mountains of South Africa's great Karoo region, and inviting the onlookers to imagine Abraam Jonkers, a ‘‘coloured’’ (mixed-race) tenant farmer now in his seventies, planting the seeds in the fresh spring earth just after a rain. The images in The Author's opening monologue—seeds, earth, rain, mountains, and valleys—are important not only to the setting of Valley Song, but to the personalities of the characters and the larger themes at work in the play.

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As The Author talks, he turns into Abraam Jonkers, known to everyone in the village of Nieu-Bethesda as ‘‘old Buks.’’ Old Buks has lived in the village his entire life, working as a tenant farmer on the same piece of land his father worked on when he was a boy. While the land has been owned by a white family, the Landmans, for generations, Abraam Jonkers and his family have only been allowed to live on the edge of it and farm a few acres. Old Buks has raised the crops for the Landmans, and his wife, before she died, cleaned their house and scrubbed their floors. Now the Landmans are gone, and the property is for sale.

As Buks sings fragments of an old song he once knew and plants pumpkin seeds in the damp soil, his granddaughter, Veronica, arrives with his lunch. She is black, seventeen, filled with youthful energy and tender devotion toward her grandfather, whom she calls ‘‘Oupa.’’ As Veronica lays out their lunch—bread with jam and a thermos of tea—Buks tells her he is concerned about a white man who visited that morning looking to buy the house and property. Because Buks does not own the land on which he lives and farms, the owner could tell him to leave, a fate worse than death for the old man. Veronica does not want to see her Oupa displaced, but losing the land, to her, might mean opportunity instead of tragedy. She complains that nothing ever happens in the small valley village, and what she is really seeking now is ‘‘Adventure and Romance!’’

More than anything, Veronica wants to be a famous singer. She has a lovely natural voice, and constantly makes up songs to sing to entertain herself and old Buks. She sings him a song she made up that morning called ‘‘Railway Bus O Railway Bus,’’ which is about her desire to jump on a fast bus and travel the world, seeing all of the big cities and strange places she has only heard about. The song reminds old Buks of painful memories and prompts him to finally tell Veronica about her mother and her past.

Veronica's mother, Caroline, was Buks' only daughter. When she was still a young girl, she ran away to Johannesburg with her troublemaking boyfriend. A year went by before Buks and his wife, Betty, received a phone call from a hospital in the city. Caroline was quite sick, so Betty went to be with her. When she returned on the ‘‘railway bus’’ she brought Veronica, a newborn baby. Caroline had died. Old Buks and Betty raised Veronica, their granddaughter, as if she were their own child. Now Buks' life is changing. Betty died when Veronica was only a few years old, and now, it seems, Veronica wants to run away to the city like her mother did before her. To make matters worse, a white man is asking questions about his land, and he faces an uncertain future.

Later that night, Veronica sneaks off to the village. She is standing on an apple box, pretending she is on TV singing for thousands of people, when The Author steps out of the shadows and surprises her. After an initial fright, Veronica tells The Author about her fantasy of being a famous performer. He warns her about the danger of dreams that are...