ABRAM AND UTZ
 by Barbara Lebow

3M, 1W, 1 EITHER

Based on real events and some real characters.  The time, actually, is 1848, but other
times are visited.  Abram Mordecai is 93 years old, seemingly alone in a country cabin in Alabama, sleeping next to his waiting coffin upon which rests an old Bible. He relives parts of his life and equivocal memories with occasional help and constant taunting from Utz, a combination dybbuk/Creek Indian spirit-being, who may sport a yarmulke festooned with feathers (e.g.).

A veteran of the Revolution, whose parentage was extramarital, Abram was an early
peddler-pioneer who traded his way south from Pennsylvania. Getting in trouble with the native population, either from womanizing or letting his horses trample their corn fields, he is beaten and has an ear cut off.  Eventually, believing, as did many others of his time, that American Indians were a lost tribe of Israel, he marries “within the faith.”
His wife, (Ruth/Imapoches), is Muscogee-African-American.  He and Ruth, their son (Samuel/Sekakee), and Ruth’s brother (William/Ochee-ub) try to survive the violence invading their world. Confused and determined, they desperately reach for each other, even as events tear them apart. The family falls victim to the Creek Indian War, to Andrew Jackson’s deceptions and broken promises, to the Horseshoe Bend massacre, Tecumsah’s rebellion, and the Creek “Removal” to Oklahoma.  With dynamics like those of today, not all manage to make it to 94. 

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