The play is about secrets, particularly family secrets. Brooke has suffered sever depression and has been suicidal to the point that her mother, Polly, has had to feed her while she lies in a hospital bed. Brooke has become this way knowing that her best friend, her brother Henry killed himself--she considered this now something that she was strong enough to do, to take her life as she found no meaning in it after publishing her first book.
However, she's been restored by writing her new memoir, which her aunt Silda helped craft with her and she has brought it to her parents home in Palm Springs for them to read at Christmas time. She has accused them of being the cause of Henry becoming the killer he was and for his suicide, and she is ready to print "the truth" at any cost, even if she loses her family over it.
The play's setting in Palm Springs represents the fact that nothing is growing in this family as they are in a literal and metaphorical desert in terms of their relationships with one another. Brooke bringing her manuscript is a symbol that she believes she is bringing life to her soul, which she believed to be long gone. But, Baitz reveals that "the truth" isn't always the whole story with the family unit. What is seen on the outside doesn't always match up to the facts, as Brooke and Silda put it.
What we learn in this desert city is that though there is no growth in the desert, there is still a seed. And that is what actually happened: Lyman and Polly have given their lives in order to protect their son. What they are on the outside bears to resemblance to what they have done. They've given up their careers in show business, even betrayed their party politics in order to protect their son. But, it is Brooke's memoir, her putting her pain into words that creates the opportunity for Lyman and Polly to tell the truth and once again save their child, but this time they save not only Henry, but Polly as well. There is a price that is paid by family members, it's not always clear as the ability for parents and children to communicate is hindered by upbringing and society. But the playwright paints a dramatic, and heightened portrait of American family life, which exists to varying degrees in our day and age.
