Haunted by Home

Phyllis Cole Braunlich sketches the life story of Lynn Riggs (18991954), the playwright best known as the author of Green Grow the Lilacs, the play that formed the basis for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! Today Riggs is recognized as one of the twentieth century’s most innovative playwrights.

Santa Fe, Hollywood, New York, and Chapel Hill: these were the cities that Lynn Riggs, “father of the folk play,” called home, along with eastern Oklahoma, the scene of his memorable re-creations of Oklahoma Territory before statehood. Riggs traveled widely to make his living and his fame, and along the way he earned the friendship of many avant-garde writers and successful theatre people of his time. This biography is also a chronicle of literary and café society on both coasts and in New Mexico during the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s.