Five people’s dreams, obsessions and failures weave and interweave in Carson McCullers’s atmospheric novel of life in a peace-time army camp. In the American Deep South is a fort that contains a group of men and women trapped in a stifling and repetitive existence. The Major and his fragile wife dine and play cards with Captain Penderton and the flamboyant Mrs Penderton watched, at a distance, by Private Williams. Quiet and unfathomable, he is fascinated by the Captain’s wife – his unsettling presence creating fear and despair within the isolated community.
