Lil T

Richmond, Virginia 1811. It’s the height of the winter social season, the General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia’s gentleman planters, along with their wives and children, have made the journey to the capital. On the night after Christmas, the city's only theater is packed with holiday revelers. In the middle of a performance, the theater goes up in flames. Based on the true story of Richmond’s theater fire, The House Is on Fire offers proof that sometimes, in the midst of great tragedy, we are offered our most precious—and fleeting—chances at redemption.

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Carolyn V. Hamilton arrives in Las Vegas in 1973 to join a circus. When that job doesn't work out, she opens the new MGM Grand Hotel/Casino as a cocktail waitress. This turns out to be more involved than a nice Lutheran girl from Seattle would think: parties, stealing, sex, drinking, and drugs are the main entertainment for a bored crew of casino employees. Some waitresses date culinary union bosses, who have their own high drama of payoffs, fights for control, fire bombings and an 18-day culinary union strike.