When you live 55 miles from the nearest gas pump, no one can hear the screams.

A fourteen-year-old farming girl is set to marry her twenty-year-old Air Force boyfriend next week. Her father disapproves and tries to convince her not to go while they shelter from a storm.

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

Aliens land in an 1890 south Texas town and attack, leaving the town's sherif no choice but to motivate the townspeople to defend their home.

On the 4th of July, a small Texas diner receives new customers from all over the nation. One family arrives to the small town in search for an old war buddy, Bill, who offered the husband a job, but the townspeople insist that Bill's work is not accepting any new workers.

A drunken, lonely man's ranch becomes the site of problems one Wyoming summer, as the ranching community is riddled with misfortune and relational tensions.

In modern-day Texas, a teenage boy navigates a world in which teens can take out virtual loans on a whim, big corporations sponsor everything from housing to church services, and consumerism runs rampant. As high school graduation approaches, he grows apart from his girlfriend and family — and becomes increasingly attached to an unsponsored, unbranded, humble little church.

A white woman who has recently moved to a rural Southern area with her family experiences a hysterical fear of the neighboring Mexican children.

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.

A Wyoming native unsuccessfully jumps between jobs over his lifetime to support his large family. Through bankruptcy and loss, he perseveres and continues to look forward to his next venture.