Shadrach

Paul Whitehurst is the 10 year-old son of a well-to-do-family in Virginia in 1935. Paul’s best friend is Mole Dabney (10), the youngest in the Dabney family, who is a victim of the great depression. The family’s tobacco plantation now in ruins, they live in a dilapidated wreck of a house on the edge of town, the dusty yard full of old cars and unused appliances. It is Paul’s favourite place, a world away from the immaculate house and stuffy lifestyle of his parents. The youngest Dabney daughter, Edmonia, is a fragile young beauty who begins to kindle new and somewhat different emotions in Paul. Then suddenly 99 year-old Shadrach arrives, an ancient black man who explains that he had been born a slave on the Dabney plantation.