After a drunken night out, a high school English teacher is kidnapped by a strange man. But as she uncovers her abductor’s motivation, the power shifts back in her favor.

A woman narrates the experience of sending her young daughter off every weekend to stay with her ex-husband and his boyfriend- until things change.

An aging electrical engineer's intensifying sensation of detachment culminates in a series of debilitating headaches. As he works through fatigue, setbacks, and pain, he finally confronts the source of his desolation.

After accidentally killing a friend's baby, a 35 year old woman tries to find her footing again at her husband's academic conference in Europe—but finds herself struggling with herself and her marriage.

In intense discussion a group leader ponders aloud, asking why hermits hide and what defines outcasts, among other cerebral queries. A group of friends discusses the oddities they have seen and perceived in their lives leather-clad hermits and criminal astronauts among them. They debate the purpose of hermitage, the classification of outcasts, and the purpose of their own reflections.

A wife leaves her husband in order to ensure his ultimate salvation after they are rejected from the Christian church for their polygamist marriage.

A young woman is returning to her husband and parents in New York, after having left her husband for a brief affair. As her father drives her home and reminisces on the hard work it took to build a life at their farmhouse, she learns that he hasn't told anyone else she's coming home.

A divorced mother has a terrible morning at her ex-husband's property at Presque Isle, which she enjoys as a vacation home for the summer, after her car breaks down and her daughter calls her out for her shameful drunken actions of the night before.

A girl flees her home when her parents want to send her back to her abusive husband.

In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.