Story

George, a 60ish retired Pullman porter and settled bachelor who keeps life neat and tidy, meets his match in more ways than one when he hires a down-on-her-luck stranger calling herself “Ethel” to be the cook at the church where he is head deacon.

Secretly she is Billie, the sweetheart he had left behind in New Orleans 40 years before when he went north to the join the railroad, now adopting a false identity to protect herself from being hurt a second time.

As Billie begins her new duties at the church, George’s innocent 20-something niece Ella explores the blush of first love with his protégé Nelson, and George’s 30-something business associate Roz engages in evolving romantic skirmishes with her main squeeze, the flirtatious numbers-runner Archie.

After Billie’s Sunday suppers prove a rousing success, she and George become business partners selling her famous fried pies from a street cart, and their old romantic feelings reawaken. All three couples are apparently moving towards happy endings, until Billie’s true identity is inadvertently revealed and her relationship with George explodes in anger at the end of Act 1.

In Act 2, the two younger couples strive to move their own relationships closer but their best intentions collapse in comic misunderstandings, causing both to split up instead.

George and Billie each reflect deeply on their own lives, enabling them to reconcile, and they agree to be friends. Billie then leads the other women in a plot to win their men back, but her scheme awkwardly misfires and drives all three couples further apart.

Forced to grapple with the painful consequences of their actions, the characters realize essential truths about acceptance, forgiveness, and the power of love to hurt and to heal, leading all to celebrate marriage as the curtain falls.