The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
By Paul Zindel

This play won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for drama. Its story of a widow and her two awkward daughters is both painful and poignant. The family is living in poverty; one daughter suffers from convulsions and the other is a social outcast. Yet the traumas endured are accompanied by a sense of hope that had an enormous impact on me, and enabled me to grasp that out of some of the most brutal circumstances, real optimism and strength of character can emerge.