LOST IN THE HILLS
Book, Music and Lyrics by Paul Lewis
Freely adapted from “A Desert of Wheat” by Zane Grey
NOTES
This musical had a six-week developmental workshop followed by a week of fully-staged public performances at Willamette University-affiliated Theatre 33 (Salem, OR) as part of their 2022 Festival of New Plays. The show received standing ovations and broke ticket sale records at Theatre 33.
Audio Demo Tracks
- Remembering Julia
- Birds of the Palouse
- The Stars Turn the Wheel
- The Price of Wheat
- Birds of the Palouse (Reprise)
- If You See My Mule
- Agrarian Reverie
- Palouse Falls
- Ask the Pioneers
- Harvest Day Agrarian Reverie
- True Western Romance
- The Stars Turn the Wheel (Reprise)
- A Just and Verdant Land
- Ask the Pioneers (Reprise)
- Palouse Falls (Reprise)
- When Somebody Needs You
- The Bridge (Julia, Lenore)
- Agrarian Reverie (Reprise)
- Could Be Someone (Johnny, Lenore)
- Finale: The Bridge (Reprise)
Script
Download or open the Full Script.
Score
To request the Piano/Vocal Score, please email info@mainstreetmusicals.org with the Name of the Show, Your Name, and the Name of Your Company or School.
Synopsis
In 1918, Lenore, a wealthy young Spokane woman, travels to the Palouse, an agricultural region of eastern Washington state. Tensions are running high there, as workers organize for better pay and conditions. Lenore, who can’t escape the feeling that she had been there before, loses her heart to a young agrarian, Johnny Pomeroy, and his radical sister, Julia, who embodies farming. When Julia’s boyfriend is framed for arson, the divide between the Pomeroys’ rough world and Lenore’s untroubled one becomes too wide to bridge. Johnny tells Lenore to return home.
A year later, the Palouse still haunts Lenore’s memories. Julia has become a fugitive following a courthouse bombing. Johnny struggles to keep the farm afloat in a time of drought. Lenore has just discovered her connection to the area: it’s where she was born before being adopted at the age of two.
Returning to the farm after desperately-needed rains, Lenore is moved to see the billowing wheat fields that Julia and Johnny had planted before Julia fled. Lenore and Johnny, sharing in the grief of losing Julia and in their love for the land, realize that they’re still in love. They decide to build a life together, imagining a more just and verdant way of farming.