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

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

In a town so small it can hardly be called a town, a black woman serves a rich white family until a series of horrific events causes the single joy in her life to vanish.

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

A town newcomer befriends a seasoned bird hunter and learns about his tragic past and the wild family that continues to haunt him long after they’ve left town.

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.

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 an East Ohio town, a middle-aged man checks into a hotel and explores the various characters, events and surroundings that define small town life.

A hungry vagabond in rural Georgia during the 1930s finds himself going to desperate lengths to find a safe place to rest and a meal to eat after unlucky encounters with the law and locals in the towns he travels to.

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.