When a northern writer arrives in a rural Tennessee town to better understand the culture for his novel, he is put through a harrowing night by the menfolk who, in the course of an elaborate joke, convince him he has inadvertently killed the son of his hosts.

In a small rural farm town, a middle-aged poet struggles with aging and finding meaning in his life.

On the Great Plains, an aging farmer and his wife struggle to sell their produce amid an increase in frozen food manufacturing. The farmer must figure out how to avoid the fate of his neighbors, who were pushed out of business and into welfare dependence.

A boy learns from his father’s best friend the history of his family and the value of man’s relationship with nature, but is interrupted by his father’s death and his mother’s sudden arrival.

When a girl from the city impulsively marries a country boy and moves to his farm, she finds that his family’s dark history of violence will overcome them both if she cannot defeat it first.

As the era of American farming comes to an end, it proves more difficult than expected for one young man to convince an old woman that she should leave the land for more fruitful prospects.

An old man reflects on his youth in the countryside in twentieth-century Kentucky, and thinks of the freedom now lost to industrialization and displacement.

A ranching family stays optimistic during tough times by remembers their good luck last summer when they persuaded a generous rancher to work on his farm.

In 1999, a Wyoming ranch owner estranged from his ex-wife, sons, and grandchildren deliberates over what to do with his property when he dies.

In a faraway future, humans have sunk to the bottom of the food chain, with animals leading society and taking charge of the world. Despite animals' hatred for humans, a smart, observant horse becomes interested in a strange human girl, one who doesn't seem to fit in with her group.