The Petrified Forest

The Petrified Forest, drama in two acts by Robert Sherwood, published and produced in 1935. This melodramatic Depression-era tale of frustrated lives and spiritual emptiness is set in a gas station and lunchroom along an Arizona highway. Gabby, the daughter of the station’s owner, is unhappy with her life in the desert and longs to go to Paris to paint. She falls in love with Alan Squier, a failed author who stops at the restaurant on his way to California and proposes elopement. Everything changes when the escaped criminal Duke Mantee arrives and holds them hostage. Though flawed by didacticism and romantic clichés, the play offers insight into the search for values in a decadent civilization.