An old man recounts the story of how he met his wife while traveling to Birmingham to look for work. Though they are initially strangers, the man is determined to win over his future-wife, despite her parents' hesitations.

When Harold's wife dies, seemingly by malicious cause, he becomes the prime suspect. As the public defender investigates her death, he finds that she may have held secrets herself.

A young girl spends her summer mostly alone, weaving in and out of the townspeople's lives and fantasizing about princesses and fairy godmothers

An elderly Russian man comes across a young American in a park and tells the young man about coming of age in Russia.

Year after year, villagers visit a well in the night to pay the gentleman who lives there a penny and wish for food, revenge, or familial bliss. And while the gentleman in the well may grant each villager their wish, he also tends to take more than just a penny from each who pay him a visit.

As an old woman revisits her family's quintessentially American history, she finds a way to respect and love her parents, despite the scandals and tragedies they endured.

A four-year-old black boy vaguely recalls a mixture of occurrences that puzzled him, including a sentenced hanging in his town of a man who allegedly murdered his wife.

A teenaged boy wants to steal from his poor family to buy a girl balloons, but when he gets home his mother falls ill and he must help his family and community pray for her.

A father tells his twenty-year-old son how he was married suddenly to his son's mother at a young age.

In a poignant reflection on the legacies of the past, a man finally hears from his grandmother the full account of his great-grandfather’s death at the hands of a close friend.