Set against the dramatic background of an idyllic South Pacific island during WWII, Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific brilliantly creates a story that is all at once hilarious, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking. Based on real-life anecdotes from James A. Michener's Tales of the South Pacific (1947), the musical follows two intercultural love stories: Nellie, a spunky nurse from Arkansas, falls in love with Emile, a French plantation owner on the island who has two children by his late Polynesian wife; at the same time, U.S. Lieutenant Cable falls for a beautiful island native named Liat. Both Americans struggle to reconcile their own prejudices with their passions, all the while under the dark cloud of a war that is coming ever closer to their island paradise.