A college professor goes on a wilderness retreat to better connect with some ideas of American Literature, but his plan backfires and turns into a learning moment for his students.

A rambunctious teenager with an inquisitive mind causes much grief for all his New England family and neighbors when he visits them in the summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I.

A professor tries to convey to his students the magnitude of the most perfectly crafted poem ever written in the English language: “Lycidas.”

When an older woman seeks reprieve from her motherly duties on a day of solitude in the woods, an unexpected slip changes her life forever.

A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

A man recalls his intimate friendship with his former English professor, who resolved to fuel his unsatisfied desire for playwriting during the time they were apart. In their reunion decades later, instead of the brilliant play he promised, the professor shows his former student a disturbing product of his mental instability.

A man and his elderly, mentally-ill mother battle for control of their home's thermostat in a future climate of extremely high temperatures year-round.

A mother and her three boys are on a small Greek island, where they prepare to reunite with her husband. Before they leave, they attend a party, and spend time reflecting on the possibility that they may never see their missing loved one again.

A progressive and bitter father going through a mid-life crisis goes on holiday to a water park with his wife and excitable son. He casually confronts racist and irritable guests while trying to figure out how to be a good dad.

When an anthropology professor moves with his family to a remote home on the Great Plains, a new friendship with an idealist, a landscaping disaster, and a disheartening consultation with an Indigenous man shake his beliefs about cultural relativism to the core.