After savagely beating his wife Beth to the brink of death, Jake returns to his mothers home in California. He is convinced that he has killed her, and his guilt begins to erode his sanity. Jakes brother Frankie goes to Beths family in search of the truth and finds her alive but badly brain damaged from Jakes beating. Frankie is accidentally shot by Beths father who has mistaken him for a deer, and during a blizzard he effectively becomes a prisoner of the household. Thereafter the tensions and enmities which motivate the two families grow disturbing and dangerous, as the border between fantasy and reality becomes increasingly blurred and as truth and lies become one and the same.
Shepards most ambitious, most accessible and most successful drama to date. Drama.
Shepard is surely the only dramatist alive who could tell a story as sad and frightening as this one and make such a funny play of it without ever skimping on its emotional depth. - The New Yorker.