La Casa de Las Diablitas (a play in three acts)

by Angus Brownfield

Overview

A tour group of US housewives is stranded in Mexico City by a revolution erupting north of the border. Rather than be confined to a refugee camp, they accept an offer from the mysterious Big Julie to set them up in a bordello. Big Julie will be their Madam; their customers will be expatriates from the US.
Meanwhile, led by the charismatic but vicious Honey Bartles, the People’s Park Freedom Fighters capture the states from the West Coast to the Appalachians, creating the United States of Mesoamerica, land of the have-nots. As the play opens, a truce has been called with the Original United States and the women of La Casa de Las Diablitas are contemplating going home.
Several agents of fate intervene. Big Julie, the madam, is actually Jules Barnes, former CIA Director, in drag. He has fled south to avoid capture by Honey Bartles, his real-life brother, John Barnes. Immediately after the truce is signed, the Revolutionary Cabinet deposes Honey, who flees with the Revolutionary treasury for Mexico City. Jules and John, mortal enemies, have each tried to assassinate the other, and that is Honey’s intent in coming to Mexico City.
Big Julie also took under “her” protection a social anthropologist, Heather O’Malley, who was stranded in Mexico City while studying the lives of Mexican streetwalkers. Heather is the prostitutes’ house mother, and she’s planning to get back to the States pronto, when first Julie and then Honey interfere.
Heather’s anchor to reality is a deaf and dumb charwoman (known simply as La Abuelita) who, when things look darkest for the housewife-prostitutes, organizes a pint-sized revolution that not only salvages their self-respect, but teaches Heather that she has something to gain from stepping out from behind her scientific objectivity and finding something worth dying for.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940152339369
Publisher:	Angus Brownfield
Publication date:	08/18/2015
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	113 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Write what you know. I know me and I'm talking to you, reader, in the first person, not the anonymous third person, because when I write I write about me and the world that thrives around me. I wrote decent poetry in college, I couldn’t get the hang of short stories. I finished my first novel so many years ago writers were still sending their works to publishers instead of agents. My first novel was rejected by everyone I sent it to. The most useful rejection, by a Miss Kelly at Little, Brown, said something like this: “You write beautifully, but you don’t know how to tell a story.” Since then I've concentrated on learning to tell a good story. The writing isn’t quite so beautiful but it will do. Life intervened. Like the typical Berkeley graduate, I went through five careers and three marriages. Since the last I've been writing like there’s no tomorrow. I have turned out twelve novels, a smattering of short stories and a little poetry. My latest novel is the third in a series about a man who is not my alter ego, he’s pure fiction, but everyone he interacts with, including the women, are me. My title for this trilogy is The Libertine. Writers who have influenced me include Thomas Mann, Elmore Leonard, Albert Camus, Graham Greene, Kurt Vonnegut and Willa Cather. I don’t write like any of them, but I wish I did. I'm currently gearing up to pay attention to marketing. Archery isn’t complete if there’s no target. I've neglected readers because I've been compulsive about putting words down on paper. Today the balance shifts.