To the American teenager, the car has always been a symbol of freedom. Yet the very thing that once offered independence and mobility sometimes turns out to be nothing more than shackles. Roy is just such a prisoner, with his wife as a co-captive, and his 1959 pink Ford Thunderbird as the warden. Roy's car represents the best days of his life, when he was without responsibilities, carefree, and single, before he went to Vietnam. But now it's been two years since his return and Roy cannot let go of the past. Elizabeth, his wife, discovers that she is pregnant and is rightfully worried about Roy's ability to accept fatherhood - or adulthood for that matter.

Laundry and Bourbon and Lone Star are companion plays that reveal the many differences, as well as the similarities, between the sexes and their various responses to growing up. In Laundry and Bourbon, Elizabeth, with her two friends Hattie and Amy Lee, discuss their lives, the decisions they have made, the results, and the futures they face. In Lone Star, Roy, his brother Ray and Cletis (Amy Lee's husband) struggle against the identities they have inherited and the men they want to be. Often intense and full of angst, there is plenty of humor throughout as we swallow this big piece of Americana, and a little piece of ourselves as well.