Cadillac, Oklahoma

You’ve been to Lake Woebegone; you’ll always remember your first visit to Winesburg, Ohio.

Welcome now to Cadillac, Oklahoma, a 21st century town, where the Dust Bowl past and dreams of a well-watered future live in daily conflict.

Cadillac’s calm surface of prejudice, blandness, and boosterism is broken open when the newspaper’s ambitious reporter starts a column, “Cadillac Voices,” giving the citizens an outlet for their grievances, sorrows, and disgust with the weather.

The politically-minded line up for or against recreating a New England green in the heart of their water-starved town. This verdant dream, championed by the banker’s widow, ends in one death and a last-minute rescue by an out-of-town prostitute.

Quiet people deal with domestic abuse, incest, religious rivalry, and stale marriages. The Sheriff finds himself overwhelmed by a mass of Christians arriving to pray him through a hostage situation at the Youth Detention Center. The woman he loves is shot in the melee and innocently paraded around a flagpole by the joyful, unwitting righteous.

The thirst for love, beauty and water run through the lives of the oblivious citizens of Cadillac as they stumble into each other on the way to fulfilling impossible dreams.