cover design by Charlotte Strick
cover photograph by Jeff Williams

A provocative new collection of one-act plays set within the confines of the front seat. The playwright employs his signature plaintive insight to great effect, investigating the inchoate apprehension that surrounds the steering wheel. Each of these seven brief vignettes explores the ethos of perception and relationship—from a make-out session gone awry to a kid-napping thinly disguised as a road trip, from a reconnaissance mission involving the rescue of a Nintendo 64 to a daughter's long ride home after her release from rehab. The result is an unsettling montage that gradually reveals the scabrous force of words left unsaid while illuminating the delicate interplay between intention and morality, capturing the essence of Middle America and the myriad paths that cross its surface.

   “LaBute is the first dramatist since David Mamet and Sam Shepard—since Edward Albee, actually—to mix sympathy and savagery, pathos and power.”
Donald Lyons, New York Post