Play Seven, Fire in the Hole, Part 1 Summary

A narrator sets the scene as 1920, 35 years after the last play, in Howsen County, where the Rowen farmstead used to be. Now there is a coal mine.

In Scene 1, adult Mary Anne, who is the same age as she was when she narrated the last play, says that the Rowens lost their land in 1920 and moved into a company mining camp. She and Tommy got married, Tommy found work in the mines, they had five children and every year for four years fever took away one of their sons. Only Joshua survived, but as the play begins he is delirious with the fever that killed his brothers.

On another part of the stage three men work in the mine: Tommy, Cassius Biggs, a descendent of the Biggs family of slaves set...