A large factory is shut down in a small town in Illinois, and the town's residents face a sudden economic depression — until a prison is built where the factory had been, invigorating the economy but bringing along with it unintended consequences.

On a rural Nebraska farm, a young woman, who married into a farmer's family, tries to help her sister-in-law, who is upset with the mundane of farm life and her husband.

A maid, silently and in thought alone, contemplates her own position in a house full of opulent, decadent lives.

A woman embarks on a treacherous, snowy journey to help her friend.

The ex-wife of a famous male writer considers a story he wrote about a neighbor they once had.

A woman, living with her husband, is overcome with a strange, inexplicable ailment to her body.

A daughter, on the verge of becoming a mother, learns a great deal in spending time with her own mother.