The Bramble Bush

The cover off a Cape Cod town -- East Norton- comes when Larry McFie, dying of Hodgkins Disease, returns home to be under the care of his old friend, Dr. Guy Montford. For Guy, a widower of recent years, helpless to relieve Larry's pain and effect a cure, finds in Margreth, Larry's wife, someone who can be helped, first in the light of his old friendship and then on her own. And, when he realizes he loves her, has made her pregnant and created a situation which repeats a burden he has borne through his parents' history and through the many situations he has covered up in the town, he makes the decision to speed the death of Larry to save Mar and the baby to come. But nurse Fran, whose sexual indiscretions have made her a target for vicious newspaper owner Parker Welk and who hopes to turn her affair with lawyer Bert Mosley into marriage, reports the missing morphine and accuses Guy through jealousy of Mar and sets off a scandal that burns everyone. Larry's father relives the death of his wife, Guy loses one nightmare to gain another, Mar -- after Guy's trial and acquittal -- vanishes to be discovered by him with a TB situation which she has neglected. The calm they find on Martha's Vineyard vanishes when the baby is born prematurely and Mar dies, leaving Guy with the son who will live, leaving Fran with the knowledge of the ruin she has caused and the doubled tragedy in Guy's life. Medical ethics, small town scandals, the drive of sex -- satisfied, thwarted, deprived, demanded -- and given -- together with the controversial issue of euthanasia -- this has a market softened by Anatomy of a Murder along with the publisher's candidate, Peyton Place and should find a captive -- even if shocked- audience. Watch.