by
Patrick Morgan Karrison
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, Other
Logline:
A Scottish soldier survives English brutality and finds redemption, love, and a new life in the wilderness of Colonial Pennsylvania.
Synopsis:
The 1746 Jacobite disaster at Culloden Moor in Scotland propels John Buchanan from the Highlands of Scotland into an English world of brutality and vicious cruelty. The odyssey begins at the conflict between the British Crown forces under the command of the English King’s son, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Scottish Jacobite Army of the Stuart pretender’s son, Bonnie Prince Charles. The Duke of Perth's regiment is called upon to charge the English army and John and Alexander Buchanan plunge into the fray, John seeking out his father in the outer ranks.
After his father dies on the battlefield, and as the Jacobite forces are slaughtered by the British Army, John Buchanan and his friend Alexander Buchanan flee south with The Duke of Perth's message for the Clan McPherson. At Ruthven, John and Alexander discover that they have passed the McPherson Clan in the Highlands of Scotland, and John continues his rush south to protect his family from English retribution. Two English soldiers, under Corporal Brent capture John and take him away as he fails to save his own wife and mother from being murdered.
John is taken to Sterling Jail and then to a ship in Glasgow that sends him to the port of Liverpool. As a prisoner of the British Crown, John languishes in the hold of an English ship where deprivation and starvation stalk the rebel Jacobite soldiers; he is eventually transported to the Colony of Maryland. On the sea voyage John survives the attack of his family's killer, Corporal Brent. In Maryland, John is sold on the auction block to an Englishman, tobacco planter Josiah Samuel, for seven years as an indentured servant.
On the tobacco plantation the slaves sing African songs as they celebrate John's defense of his friend, a slave named Bob, whipped by the cruel overseer, Roscoe; they present John with a small cane flute they made. Samuel’s daughter Kate pleads with John to save her from marriage with a wealthy, older man. John refuses, and is forced to flee when Kate threatens to accuse him of rape.
John flees to the wilderness of the Colony of Pennsylvania with the assistance of a Scottish colonist, William Traynor; John falls in love with Janet, William's daughter. After confrontations with roadside robbers, and an attack by a renegade Indian, Topeka, John looks toward the promise of freedom, a new home, and a new life.
Bio:
Patrick Harrison has a BA in Theatre, a MA in Theatre and Film, a MFA in Directing. He has worked in the entertainment industry for many years; one of his plays has a staged reading in Richmond, Virginia.
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Contact screenwriter Patrick Morgan Karrison
Times Viewed: 161
Submission Date: 2010-03-27 11:41:06
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