The Name Hennessy

I wasn’t a woman who ever saw herself like this, the sheriff’s badge hanging heavy over my heart. I didn’t want to wear the damn thing, but all the men feared putting it on. I hoped the silver star would lead me to a day of reckoning, despite the nightmare it would bring. Because sooner or later the man I’ve been waiting for would return. And that would be a dark day indeed. 
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But I needed to stop the visions that visited me. To silence the voice in my head. There was no trusting the stories I had heard, and I refused to believe there was such a thing as a man who couldn’t be killed. Yeah, Hennessy was coming. And he’d pay for what he’d done. I longed for that day. I longed for . . . today.

NO MATTER WHAT YOU TELL ME
written & performed by Benjamin Boucvalt

My father was a hard man. Which worked out just great with a son like me who knew it all. Well, not all of it. But a lot of it. Ok, not a lot, but some… Ahh, who am I kidding. I didn’t know anything. None of us knew a goddamn thing. 

No Matter What You Tell Me is a years-long journey of a son who liked to dig. Arguably in places he shouldn’t have been. I mean, we all know what our parents told us, right? “Mind your business.” I sometimes wonder if that would’ve been the better road. To have kept things buried. 
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Maybe it wasn’t necessary for me learn about that family member who chased after a burglar while completely naked and holding a lamp. Oh, well. No turning back now. Hilarious, heartbreaking, and ever so hopeful, this story is of one secret that leads into another. One that proves how family is fraught, never what it appears, and, despite it all, so very necessary.
                                                                  *copies only available where performances are held.

THE RIVER ROAD - a novel

"A story of escaping the past and carving a new future without chains."
On the River Road, at a dark bend in the South, a shadow lives. And at that bend, a man and his slave are pulled together by a mysterious connection. The master inherits a plantation and plans to marry his love and put aside his past, while the slave lingers at his side, accepting of his place and detached from hope. But neither man has memories that can easily be forgotten. When a death forces both of them onto the road, each races toward his own kind of freedom, which can only be earned in a place where neither one of them leads or follows. All the while, the shadow of the River Road pursues. It stalks them with steel and lead and perhaps the most dangerous weapon of all  — the past.