Talley's Folly, first produced in 1979, is Wilson's most award-winning play. Like The Mound Builders, it deals with uncovering secrets from the past, but in Talley's Folly love is attainable, people can be trusted, and the atmosphere is sweet.

Fifth of July, produced in 1978, is another of Wilson's plays set in a big house near a lake in the Midwest with a small group of extended family members and friends. Ken, a wounded Vietnam War veteran, has decided to sell the family home without consulting his family or his lover and must weigh money against family to find the course of action that will make him happy.

Michael Ondaatje's novel Anil's Ghost, published in 2000, is about an anthropologist and an archeologist who examine human remains found in Sri Lanka. They suspect that the bones are not ancient but are instead the...