An aimless, twenty-two-year-old Californian man questions everything—from his job to his ability to take care of a potted plant—as a heat wave sweeps his town. Just when he's about to spiral, a life-changing act of heroism gives him unexpected clarity.

After a troubled teenager living with his grandparents in southern California gets busted for drugs, he spends the summer with his mother and his new stepfather, where he slowly reforms his behavior.

A divorced mother has a terrible morning at her ex-husband's property at Presque Isle, which she enjoys as a vacation home for the summer, after her car breaks down and her daughter calls her out for her shameful drunken actions of the night before.

A grown man remembers the summer of 1984 when a girl he had a crush on took him on a tour of her haunted house.

Guided by his late grandfather's wisdom, a young man in 1970s America must continuously attempt to stand up against a colleague's violence and console the man's distressed girlfriend, even when she is tragically hospitalized.

As he flushes three decades of narcotics out of his system, an Arkansas man recalls a traumatic hunting trip into the woods with his father and his friends. In this memory, he finds the roots of both his addiction and his identity.

In the 1990s, a 19-year-old aspiring actor-turned-construction worker develops an affinity for crack cocaine, making him doubt the promise of his future.

In 1992, a 12-year-old child in Tucson, Arizona withstands the constant abuse of his vile mother as they all try to navigate their hopeless poverty.

In inner-city 1980s Boston, a middle-school boy must care for himself and his baby half-brother when their mother runs away to Texas.

In 1980s Boston, a woman and her family finally collect her mother's ashes almost two years after her death. Despite her father's remarriage and her many siblings' variegated lives, they all come together for a touching tribute to their matriarch's memory.