Books with title The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

This play has a cast of 14 men and 6 women. Amelia, the proprietor of the Sad Cafe, throws her new husband out of their bedroom on their wedding night. Torn between anger and desire the husband finally leaves town only to return some years later to find Amelia showering all her affection on a dwarf cousin who has come to live with her. At their first meeting the dwarf is hopelessly attracted to the husband. In turn, the husband moves back into the Sad Cafe, threatening to run away with the dwarf if Amelia objects. The day of reckoning soon arrives and the husband and wife meet to settle their differences with their bare hands.

This is the tale of Miss Amelia, gaunt and lonely owner of a small-town store; and how she squandered her love on Cousin Lymon, the little strutting hunchback who turned the store into a cafe; and how her rejected husband, the meanest man in town, came back and stole the hunchback's heart; and, of the gargantuan fight that followed. This is a miniature epic with the melancholy atmosphere of a ballad.