Drought Angel

About this drama

Two thousand seven hundred twenty-nine characters, and the engine is a child's gift for understanding animals in a terrain that has lost everything. The setting is the 1930s Texas drought. A historical catastrophe. The copy treats it as a living character. After five-year-old Flora loses both parents, her mean aunt Sybil regards her as a burden and plans to sell her to a circus. Clara, a kind single mother, trades the family's last two pounds of flour for her. The opening establishes two maternal figures: one who discards, one who sacrifices. Flora's gift is specific. She can understand the language of animals. On her first day at the Millers', she learns from a field mouse that dried corn is buried under the tool shed. At the market, she hears a hen's thoughts and predicts it will lay eggs. It lays thirty in a row. The gift operates as both survival mechanism and public justice. The conflict escalates when Sybil releases pests into the Millers' medicinal herb field and tramples the wild ginseng. Flora calls birds to wipe out the pests. Then she fetches water from a miraculous spring guarded by a grizzly bear to revive the ginseng. The middle act introduces Reynard, heir to an Eastern noble family, whom Flora saves from a wild boar. Sybil then falsely accuses Flora of murdering Reynard, and a corrupt judge tortures Daniel, Flora's foster brother. Reynard arrives at the last moment to expose the truth. The final act involves Flora becoming Lucas's medical apprentice and forgiving Lily, a jealous senior who poisoned her tea. Seventy episodes are listed as complete, and the copy traces a full arc from orphan to great female physician.

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