Synopses: "... four women ...end up together in a county jail on Mother’s Day. They learn each other’s secrets, the walls come down and an unlikely sort of community is formed.
Ms. Meth’s secret is her deformed child who died before she could ever name it. There are hints that her drug use was to blame. Whether it was or not, she’s been living with the guilt. The other women join forces to name the dead child.
They are Elizabeth Rose Brown Hemmings Nardle, a Jesus-quoting drunk in her 40s, married multiple times and mother to 10 children; Allison Storey, a middle-class PTA mom who has landed here because of unpaid parking tickets and insists she doesn’t belong; and Bonnie , a precocious but frightened 14-year-old runaway with an ill-tempered father. She was arrested for reasons we don’t know.
The show has enough wisecracks and jail references to keep the audience giggling, but then it slips you a one-two punch. It’s the ending that seems to affect the inmates. All the women but the youngest have been bailed out. When the curtain closes on Bonnie, alone, she is waiting for parents who may never show."
(synopsis by Rekha Basu from her feature in the Des Moines Register)