For the Use of the Hall

While burning bogus art works for heat and raiding a neighbor's back porch for food, they are joined, unexpectedly, by Terry, a nun facing a crisis of belief, and then by Martin, a failed Broadway playwright, and his new wife

Terry and Martin are brother and sister and Charlotte, years ago, was the girl whom Martin's mother had chosen as his intended bride. But this, like so many well meant plans, never came to pass nor, for that matter, did most of the hopes and dreams which all had held in their promising, and much happier, youth

The house they had come together in belonged to Bess, departed mother of Martin and Terry, who appears as a "vision" now and again to evoke the past or comment on the present and to bring into focus the funny, albeit desperate and ultimately touching, plight to which all these zany yet very human and believable people have come