by Adam Rapp
First published 2014
Bean Scully lives in a single room cobbled together from salvaged automobile parts, complete with a makeshift table built from PVC pipes. On a violent storm night, she draws leeches from her teenage son's bare skin while waiting for her other boy Jeff to return from his prison break. The house becomes a waystation for the desperate as the tempest rages. A wounded man drags himself inside with a bullet lodged in his leg. A pregnant teenager seeks shelter. Two barely speaking outlaws arrive with destruction trailing behind them. Each visitor brings fresh chaos to an already fractured world. Bean tries to hold her fractured family together as the night spirals into brutality. The storm outside mirrors the violence within as these broken souls collide in ways that will shatter what little remains of their lives. In this raw corner of the Southern Midwest, survival means accepting that some wounds never heal and some families can only love through pain.
Genres: fiction, drama, crime, contemporary
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, gritty, intimate
Setting: Cottonwoods, Southern Midwest
Period: contemporary
64 pages · Paperback · Broadway Play Publishing, Incorporated
Content warnings: abuse, graphic-violence, violence