Taken For Granted

James Henry Ferguson doesn’t belong here.  After a highly publicized fall from grace, James attempts to flee from the chaos in his life. He ends up in a community he had never heard of before, one that has been neglected and ignored by everyone in rural Ham, Mississippi. A place of abject poverty, the neighborhood is commonly referred to as “Around the Way.”  Within a place forgotten by the rest of the world, politics can be a dangerous game. When a troubling discovery is made, the entire neighborhood is rocked to its core and James is forced to confront his own past in order to help the community have a future. He will have to find the strength to fight for the neighbors he once disregarded and avert a heart-breaking disaster. 

Cammie, a dancer in her thirties, has just landed her first part in a show since coming to New York City. Yet the tug of familial obligations and the guilt of what she sacrificed to be there weigh down her dancing feet. The early narrative follows the cast of the show, with a backstage glimpse into the chaotic and colorful world of struggling performers.

Cammie’s lover, Tom, an older piano player, came to the city as a young man in the 1980s with a story eerily in tune with Cammie’s own.

Through their triumphs and failures, both learn the fleetness of glory, the sweetness of new love, and how a dream come true isn’t cherished until it’s passed. The bright lights of the stage intoxicate, while degradation and despair lurk close behind the curtain. Their stories are marred by two viruses, AIDS in the 1980s and COVID-19 today, both of which ravaged the performing arts community, leaving a permanent scar on those who lived through them.

Cammie thinks she finally has her chance in a major show, until COVID forces the unthinkable—Broadway being shut down. The physical, financial, and emotional toll this takes on the dancers and musicians of the story is laid bare. The effort it took to survive even the next day in New York City becomes a stark reality for many of the characters.

“It took a lot of lucky breaks to make it here. This pandemic would undo a lot of lucky breaks for a lot of people.”

Jason Tanner, protégé of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has been by his mentor’s side in New York to spread the message of passive resistance. In Harlem, the epicenter of Black culture, poet Anita Hopkins tries to capture the message of Malcolm X, which she believes with all her heart: The time is now; enough is enough.

When Jason goes to the iconic B Flat lounge and sees Anita perform, he’s transfixed. Her passion for what she believes runs as deep as his. And Anita has never met anyone who can match her wit for wit like this. Their scorching desire for each other clashes with their fundamentally opposed beliefs...until, in a cruel twist of fate, Jason is drafted for Vietnam.

With the country at a breaking point and their romance caught in the center, both Anita and Jason are going to have to redefine heart, home, and what they truly desire.