Other Desert Cities - by Jon Robin Baitz (Paperback)

About the Book

In OTHER DESERT CITIES, Brooke Wyeth returns home to Palm Springs to visit her parents after a six-year absence. A once-promising novelist, she announces to her family the imminent publication of a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the family's history - a wound that her parents don't want reopened.
Brooke has come home to draw a line in the sand and is daring her family to cross it. Her brother won't play her game; her aunt knows way too much, and her parents fall into all their old routines as they plead with her to keep their story quiet. In this family, secrets are currency and everyone is rich.
In simplest terms, the play is about a girl who comes home to the desert with a story about where she is from, who her people really are, what she thinks they really are. Her parents represent an Establishment that she feels has betrayed this country. She goes to war with them, and blood is spilled.

Book Synopsis

Now on Broadway starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Harris, Allison Janney, Joe Keery, and Lily Rabe, and directed by Tony Award winner John Benjamin Hickey

Winner of the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play - Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama

On Christmas Eve, the sun-lit Palm Springs home of a politically connected family becomes a battleground of memory, loyalty, and legacy

In Pulitzer Prize finalist Other Desert Cities, Brooke Wyeth returns home to Palm Springs to visit her parents after a six-year absence. A once-promising novelist, she announces to her family the imminent publication of a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the family's history--a wound that her parents don't want reopened. Brooke has come home to draw a line in the sand and is daring her family to cross it. Her brother won't play her game; her aunt knows way too much, and her parents fall into all their old routines as they plead with her to keep their story quiet. In this family, secrets are currency and everyone is rich.

Other Desert Cities is a play about a girl who comes home to the desert with a story about where she is from and who she thinks her family really is. Her parents represent an establishment that she feels has betrayed America. She goes to war with them and blood is spilled in a play "with gleaming dialogue [and] tantalizing hints of a dangerous mystery." (The New York Times).

Review Quotes

Praise for Other Desert Cities

A Finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Drama
Nominated for the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play

"The most richly enjoyable new play for grown-ups that New York has known in many seasons. . . . In his most fully realized play to date, Mr. Baitz makes sure our sympathies keep shifting among the members of the wounded family portrayed here. Every one of them emerges as selfish, loving, cruel, compassionate, irritating, charming and just possibly heroic. . . . leaves you feeling both moved and gratifyingly sated." --Ben Brantley, The New York Times

"Other Desert Cities is a winner . . . funny and fierce, invigorating and intelligent." --Joe Dziemianowicz, Daily News

"Baitz's script sparkles with a deep understanding oif the turmoil boiling beneath the surface of his characters and it is chock-full of wonderful lines." --Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

"This scathingly funny, deeply felt family drama is the tastiest, most entertaining new play of the season . . . with a wisdom and compassion--and sureness of touch--that make this his most mature, moving, and flat-out enjoyable work to date."--Adam Green, Vogue

"A master of crackling dialogue . . . Baitz manages to engage matters of public and private morality--and public and private ideology--with and energy, and a minimum of self-flagellation."--Scott Brown, New York magazine

"Baitz's latest familial drama manages to be funny, cutting and illuminating. Secrets, lies and betrayals play out against a backdrop of Californian affluence and restraint. This is rich dysfunction--zingers are delivered with a whiskey chaser." --Fern Siegel, The Huffington Post

About the Author

Jon Robin Baitz's plays include My Beautiful Goddamn City, Ten Unknowns, The Paris Letter, Mizlansky/Zilinsky or Schmucks, A Fair Country, The Substance of Fire, and an adaptation of Hedda Gabler.