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.

A middle-aged man working for a Jewish organization in New York plunges into a mid-life crisis when his wife and children leave him, leading him to rethink his religion and career choices.

A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

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

In limbo between life and death after falling five hundred feet into a cement mixer, a construction worker reflects on the nature of love.

Terrence and Ruth, a middle-aged couple, move house for a fresh start - but their new house is in disrepair. Ruth contends with sickness, unfulfillment, and her staling marriage while laboriously cleaning it.

The tragic loss of his childhood friend puts a boy on the path of religion - but his inner feelings remain as repressed and turbulent as they always were.

In this metafiction, the many lives of an unnamed man are scrutinized as he passes through millennia.

When a fourteen-year-old boy moves with his family to a farm town, he reads a book that leads him to have a crisis of faith and he begins to question what really happens after death.

An elderly woman finds herself surrounded by tragedy.