The Tall Girls
by Meg Miroshnik

Sometimes basketball is the only way out.

Even for a girl.

Even in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

The tiny hamlet of Poor Prairie doesn’t see a lot of folks coming into town, least of all men – they’ve all left to find desperately needed work.

So when one gets off the train, everybody talks, especially the high school girls looking for a meal ticket.

The marryin’ kind.

But this man is mysterious.

He’s from Poor Prairie, but nobody knows where he’s been and his story’s got some… gaps.

A few things are clear, though – he’s teaching at the high school, he knows basketball, and most importantly, he has the only inflated basketball in town.

As for that meal ticket?

He may just have that after all, if he can get his Poor Prairie girls good enough at basketball to sell a few tickets.

And keep ’em from marryin’ off.

And out of fights.

And out of the sights of the Committee on Play, Girls Division (it’s the 1930s – when basketball was “dangerous” for girls).

And stay ahead of that mysterious past… Inspired by the flourishing and the decline of high school girls’ basketball teams in the 1930s rural Midwest, The Tall Girls asks: Who can afford the luxury of play?

And what is the cost of childhood?

Featuring a stong ensemble of female characters, The Tall Girls examines issues of class and gender amidst the historic 1930s Dust Bowl.