When The Right Man Finds You

A Tragic Neo-Noir Romantic Thriller

"Rebecca meets Sleeping with the Enemy" -- a tragic romantic thriller where passion and restoration collide with buried secrets, turning a dream home into a haunted trap of love, betrayal, and fate.

Inspired by the kidnapping of my award winning journalist wife.

Logline: A gifted couple with shadowy pasts fall passionately in love while restoring a turn-of-the-century haunted mansion with ancient wood—only to discover that some secrets won't stay buried, and their dream home may become their grave.

Screenplay and Stage Play.

From The Black List:

"Ambitiously, this startling tragedy weaves together the stylistic influences of neo-noir and modern horror to create an intriguing tale of passion, violence, and haunting secrets. In a clever nod to the noir tradition, Marley and Bo's stumbling meet-cute sets in motion a rivalry that soon becomes all-consuming attraction. In crafting their characters, the playwright has skillfully created a compelling central couple whose zingy banter and mysterious backstories help build the play's suspense. Meanwhile, the scary old house setting, the highly-detailed backstory about the McClure family and their missing child, and the recurring appearance of the giggling ghost deftly evoke the horror genre while establishing a chilling sense of atmosphere. Smartly interspersed flashes of humor -- as when Marley screams at her surprise party and Bo jokes "We have a ghost" at their wedding -- provide moments of welcome comic relief while deepening the play's eerie themes. In key places, the playwright/screenwriter moves the story forward through powerfully dramatic moments of action, as when Bo and Marley make love by the window, Marley discovers a body in the water, and Bo bashes Salvador's head."

Synopsis:
In the sleepy town of Northville, Michigan, a once-grand Victorian mansion looms above a deep lake and a forgotten family graveyard. The McClure House -- vacant for decades, overgrown and ghosted by rumor -- becomes the unlikely setting for a passionate love story between two people trying to rebuild their lives.

Marley Grayson, a graceful and guarded woman in her 30s, has just taken over the local newspaper. She’s smart, stylish, and hiding more than a few secrets. Bo Foster, a rugged craftsman with a gift for working ancient wood, owns the local arts and crafts store, Bo & Arrow. When Marley out bids and hires Bo to help restore the McClure House with his visions, their chemistry is immediate and electric. Together, they begin to breathe life back into the mansion -- and into each other.

But the deeper they dig into the house’s bones, the more the past begins to surface. Bo’s childhood friend, Salvador Turk, a mentally unstable man with a dangerous edge, lurks at the background of the property, feeling he was betrayed because Bo's and Salvador's plans of living next to each other are now Bo's and Marley's plans of living with each other and the change has minimized his dreams. Construction boss Sam Negahban and his simple-minded laborer Hooman Zanib bring their own tensions to the job site. Meanwhile, Marley’s newspaper staff—plump and pushy Jaclyn, her possibly romantic partner Judy, and the cranky old printer Matthew Jones -- watch the romance unfold with suspicion and gossip.

As seasons shift from summer to spring, the McClure House becomes a character of its own: creaking, whispering, revealing. The couple’s restoration project uncovers more than just sunken logs and century-old wood -- it unearths buried truths, long-held guilt, and a darkness neither of them saw coming. Sheriff Brown, the town’s aging lawman, begins to circle as the line between love and danger blurs.

Told in a series of intimate scenes -- on the veranda, in the gazebo, by the lake, and within the dimly lit halls of the house --When The Right Man Finds You is a haunting meditation on love, trust, and the secrets we carry. With minimal sets and evocative lighting, the screenplay and stage play invite the audience to imagine the grandeur and decay of the McClure estate, while the emotional architecture of the story builds toward a devastating climax.

Some homes are meant to be restored. Others are meant to be left alone.

Background on ancient wood as part of the plot: From TED Case Studies - Lake Superior Sunken Logs.

In Checaumegon Bay, Wisconsin, on Lake Superior, the Superior Lumber Company is involved in the recovery of millions of sunken logs 60 feet below the bay's surface. Because the logs have existed for approximately 100 years at large depths and in very cold water, they have been preserved almost to perfection. Most of the old slow growth wood at the bottom of the bay was clearcut in the late 1800s from areas in Canada, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, and were floated downstream to ports in lake Superior to be loaded onto ships for transport. During the 1930s, most of the northern Midwest old growth forest was deforested, and the large timber corporations had begun to leave the areas, along with all the timber at the bottom of Lake Superior. Today, treasure hunters like Scott Mitchen are involved in an effort to raise approximately one million logs to the surface of Lake Superior to be processed and sold to furniture makers, architects, contractors, instrument makers at high prices.
CASE NUMBER: 421 - CASE MNEMONIC: SUNKWOOD. CASE NAME: SUNKEN WOOD USE.