Cully's Gold: A Young Girl's Struggle with Temptation and Ambition, 1873

Downeast Maine, 1873, 14-year-old Sadie Coggins faces a hard choice. She'd traded some shiny pyrite (aka fool's gold) for bars of silver with the town's simple character Cully. He'd begged her to swap—didn't value that tarnished silver, and she needed a way to pay for schooling beyond the one room school house learnin' she'd just completed. But now a prank organized by the school bully Frank results in Cully's rickety house burning to the ground. Folks step up to build a new place for him, but who has money for lumber? There's a depression on. Does Sadie let her dream of going away to high school dissolve? Her best friend Rosa May urges her to stick to her plans. They'd made a bargain to see the world beyond their little town. But Sadie knows Father won't abide with the trade she made. The play creates a vivid picture of rural, coastal Maine through the challenges and choices facing young people back then. In this coming-of-age play, Sadie resolves her dilemmas in confrontations with her best friend, her father and Frank, as she courageously begins to chart her own course.