LILY: So, my dear, once more we appear to be at an impasse, don’t we? I can’t go and you won’t stay.  Some things don’t change, I guess.

RAYETTE: I feel so helpless. Do you know what it’s like to be so far away and not be able to help your own mother when she’s sick?

LILY (smiling): No. I don’t.

Last Chance Liquor is a small, failing liquor store in a small, failing Kansas town. Its owner, Ray Stauffer, is a recovering alcoholic whose daughter, Rayette Boulanger, cut off all ties when he and his wife, Lily Boulanger, had a messy divorce during Rayette’s childhood. Now Rayette, a modestly successful actor, has returned to persuade her mother to return with her to Los Angeles for cancer treatment. But Lily has no intention of moving, particularly since her daughter left the family and town decades ago. Among those she left behind was her high school sweetheart, Steve Shepherd, now a Cortona councilman and arts entrepreneur.

Seeing Steve again after so long throws Rayette—in her 40s and already re-examining the life she has chosen—into further uncertainty. She is frustrated by her mother’s refusal to cooperate with her delayed efforts to play the daughter. She is further angered at having to interact with her father after their long estrangement—particularly when she learns that Alice Leaf, the woman with whom he had an affair, is about to move in with her mother.

But when Eddie Dallinger shows up claiming to be the son that Rayette had as a teenager and gave up for adoption at birth—a son her family and Steve didn’t even know existed—Rayette’s world turns upside down.

LAST CHANCE LIQUOR has six characters, two men and four women, and a single set.