Two Trains Running

This is the 1960s chapter of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright's decade-by-decade saga of ordinary African Americans in this turbulent century. It takes place in Memphis Lee's coffee shop in a Pittsburgh neighborhood that is on the brink of economic development. Focus is on the characters who hang out there: a local sage, an elderly man who imparts the secrets of life as learned from a 322-year-old sage, an ex con, a numbers runner, a laconic waitress who slashed her legs to keep men away, and a developmentlly disabled man who was once cheated out of a ham. With Chekhovian obliqueness, the author reveals simple truths, hopes and dreams, creating a microcosm of an era and a community on the brink of change.