On Words: A Play

By William Phinizy Spalding

In this bold and metaphysical thirteen-act drama, William Phinizy Spalding summons four centuries of an American family's haunted lineage to confront Osiris, the ancient keeper of death and resurrection. From the grief-stricken banks of 1617 Virginia, where John Rolfe bargains for Pocahontas's return, to the swamp-shrouded origins of a fabricated name in the 18th century, from the moral shadows of slavery on Sapelo Island to the glittering temptations of Coca-Cola's invention, papal honors, and Cold War intrigue, each generation faces the same relentless judge lurking beneath the earth. Guided by a mysterious Narrator, ancestral voices wrestle with doubt, power, faith, addiction, envy, and the destructive fire of creation itself. At the journey's end, the author steps into Elysium to claim his inheritance; not as a victim or apologist, but as the living bearer of the family's unfinished story. Part historical phantasmagoria, part philosophical passion play, On Words asks a deceptively simple question: What do we do with the weight of the words, sins, and myths we are handed?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1105842029
• ISBN13: 9781105842023
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Length: 108 Pages
• Weight: 0.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"