The setting is a farmhouse somewhere in the Amercian West, inhabited by a family who have enough to eat, but not enough to satisfy the other hungers which bedevil them. The father is a drunk; the mother a slattern; the daughter precocious; and the son an idealist who wants something better but has no idea of how to attain it. The family decides to sell the house to raise money; the mother talks of running off to Europe, but ends up asleep on the kitchen table; the father sobers up and tries to take control; the daughter is blown up in the family car and the son is brutalized by the evil forces besetting them. In the end of the play its people become a metaphor for the underside of Amercian life - the innocents forever pursuing a diminished dream, and the illusion of fulfillment which remains ever beyond their reach.,

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