Synopsis: The Last Dog (working title)

It is Chicago, 1966. Carol Gruber, a lost child of the 50s, has grown up in the shadow of The Red Menace and looks toward a future that includes The Vietnam War and the Hippie Revolution. Living with her family in a small bungalow on the southwest side of a city tense with racial prejudice and the beginnings of civil unrest, Carol struggles to come to terms with her low self-esteem and feeling of not belonging. She despises herself for despising her critical, secretly alcoholic parents, who acts as if they were still in the middle of The Great Depression, and her four out-of-control younger siblings, who want more from her than she has to give.

In her awkward attempts to make sense of her life and find the love and acceptance that she has never gotten from her parents, Carol dives into the bar scene, getting a job as a cocktail waitress and then bartender, finally ending up turning tricks on the side at the urging of her boyfriend, a part-time bartender and bouncer who indulges in the occasional burglury and loves nothing more than a bar fight after a night-long orgy of drinking.

One day, she meets an anorexic young woman named Donna. Donna introduces Carol to the uninhibited world of hippies, where she meets university students who can't get out of bed without smoking their first joint of the day, as well as college drop-outs, working as cab drivers or ditch diggers for the money to buy the next dime bag or bottle of speed. Drugs and talk of revolution are everywhere, and Carol fits in without ever feeling as if she belongs there any more than she did in the bar scene.

Moving between the two groups, Carol finds herself on a downward spiral. Eventually she realizes that, if she doesn't pull out of it, she will crash and burn.