When a desperate Wisconsin farmwife invites WWII German POWs to work the family orchard, she brings the war home. While she saves the orchard, she loses her soul.

SYNOPSIS:

The Cherry Harvest

Lucy Sanna

Introduction:

During WWII, the US military secretly transported enemy POWs from Europe to the States, housed them in Army bases, and leased them to family farms. My historical novel, THE CHERRY HARVEST (HarperCollins 2015) draws from that little-known chapter in American history.

Logline: When a desperate Wisconsin farmwife invites WWII German POWs to work the family orchard, she brings the war home. While she saves the orchard, she loses her soul.

Format:Feature.

Genre: Drama, romance.

Audience: Female.

Voice: Two points of view—mother and daughter—ever in conflict.

Comps:BLUE JASMINE (because of Jasmine’s meltdown) meets THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (WWII Vets bring back both physical and emotional pain).

Rating:PG-13, for sex and violence.

Setting: WWII home front, summer 1944. Cherry orchard in Door County, WI, on the shore of Lake Michigan. Quaint town (butcher shop, barber shop, green grocer, dry goods store). Scenes atop lighthouse. Gatsby-like parties at politician’s nearby lakefront home.

Characters/Setup:

• In the spring of 1944, even the lushorchards of Door County can’t escape the ravaging effects of war. With labor short, food rationed, and money scarce, Charlotte Christiansen (tall, blond, mid-30s) barters what she can to make ends meet. Her parents were tenant farmers, and she now has her own farm. It’s all she cares about. Except for her son, Ben, now in Europe fighting Nazis. He loves the land as she does, and she’s determined to save the farm for him. In doing so, she loses sight of the needs of her husband and daughter.
• Husband Thomas, a dreamer, who wanted to be an English professor, left the university to take over the family orchard after fire took his parents. He left his love of books, as well as his lovely soulmate (fellow student, now professor), and met Charlotte, who was eager to help him run the orchard. Charlotte knows she can’t compete with whatever Thomas left behind, but her love of the orchard carries her forward in spite of her empty marriage.
• Kate(17, looks like her mother) takes after her bookish father. She raises rabbits to earn money for college. Charlotte thinks books are frivolous and college is impractical for girls.

ACT ONE

In a desperate attempt to put food on the table, Charlotte butchers one of Kate’s rabbits. Angry, Thomas sides with Kate against the crime. The dinner goes uneaten as Charlotte argues with Thomas, and later with the county board, to allow enemy POWs to work in the orchard. Given the labor shortage, without additional help this will be the second year they’ll have no harvest. Charlotte prevails, but anxious townspeople accuse her of making a bargain with the devil.

Frightened of the coming Nazis, Kate escapes from her bedroom into the night to visit her friend, Josie, who is engaged to Ben. Josie’s father is the light keeper, and the two friends often meet at the top of the lighthouse, their private place. A year older than Kate, the more experienced Josie dangles intimate knowledge of a world Kate has never tasted. While the two have their differences, they are jointly terrified about the POWs. Josie says she will shoot one for Ben.

Charlotte cheers when the Army brings the POWs to live in the migrant camp on the property. Though the Germans come with an armed guard, Charlotte warns Kate to steer clear of them. Riding her bicycle home one day, Kate veers away from a POW who appears to be chasing her and falls to the gravel. Scared and angry, she demands that her mother send him away. Charlotte refuses to tell the Army, let alone the town, for fear that all the POWs will be taken from her.

Thomas befriends one of the POWs, Karl, a math teacher who speaks English, and invites him to tutor Kate. Charlotte argues against it, but Thomas insists. When the handsome German enters Charlotte’s kitchen and meets her eyes, a wild animal lurches inside her. He carries an unexpected self-confidence, and the way he looks at her arouses feelings long buried. Unlike Thomas, he loves the earth as Charlotte does.

ACT TWO

When Kate tells Josie that Karl is a good teacher, a good person, Josie demands that Kate leave and not return until she stops her math lessons. In tears, Kate races from the lighthouse into a storm that carries her north on a swift current. Nearly drowning, she is rescued by Clay, son of a war-profiteering senator from Illinois. He invites her into his family’s Gatsby-like summer home where his college friends are having a party. Swept into a magical romance, Kate later accuses Clay of shirking his civic duty by not enlisting to fight the enemy.

Charlotte goes to the barn to put away tools. There, the POW who chased Kate pushes Charlotte to the floor and tries to rape her. Charlotte grabs a butcher knife and does enough damage to slow the man down, but he continues what he came for until Karl appears and kills him. Afraid Karl will be taken away and executed, Charlotte tells him to dump the body into the lake.

From her perch up in the lighthouse with Josie, Kate is horrified to see Karl disposing of a body. She runs home, only to find her mother cleaning bloodstains from the barn floor. Knowing that Kate will tell Thomas, Charlotte confesses to Kate but tells her she must keep the crime secret. The next day Kate can’t bear to watch as her father gathers a posse to find the missing POW, but she remains silent so that her mother won’t go to jail.

The only person Charlotte can turn to for support in this is Karl. Passionately drawn to each other in crime, they begin an affair.

ACT THREE

Charlotte receives a telegram stating that Ben is coming home, injured. At the train station, she is horrified to find that he’s missing a leg. At home, her sweet son becomes volatile. Kate tries to understand and support Ben, but he turns against her. Josie breaks her engagement with him.

Fearing Ben’s unstable emotions, Charlotte goes to the barn to tell Karl to stay away from the house. Ben discovers them together and Charlotte watches in horror as Ben and Karl wrestle over a pistol. When the gun goes off, Ben is dead. Blind with fury, Charlotte turns the gun on Karl.

Inconsolable, Charlotte barely hears Thomas tell her he’s selling the orchard he never wanted and putting her into a place where people will care for her.

EPILOGUE Fall. Kate enters the university in Madison, where her father has opened a book store. She carries a photo of Clay in his Navy pilot’s uniform somewhere in the Pacific. He writes of their future together, he a pilot, she a writer. Her story is just beginning. But her mother's story haunts her.

But her mother’s story haunts her.