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.

When a young boy witnesses an odd event from the window of his small-town house, he begins to doubt the stability of the world around him.

A divorced 16 year old girl reflects on how the sexual trauma she experienced as a child perpetuates in her relationships with men throughout her life, forcing herself to grow up too early and leaving her starved for affection and love.

A creative writing teacher sits through a conference with one his favorite students. He takes us on a journey through the characters in the story, and in his life.

While they were originally set on different paths after graduation, a young boy and girl get engaged. They decide to have their teacher as their witness, but once they discover their teacher had killed herself, they break their engagement.

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.

After their only child dies during his gap year abroad, a woman reflects on her relationship with her husband and comes to understand that they deal with fear and grief in different ways.

On the eve of her students' elementary school graduation, a teacher in rural Ireland makes one last push to prepare her students for the real world.

After a young Jewish boy moves to Berlin with his family, he learns that his family agreed to watch a boy from the mental institution on the weekends. The two become friends, and the boy learns more about himself through meeting the other boy.

A first-generation college student, hours from graduating, dreads leaving school and her faculty mentor for the "real world" and her traditional, Eastern European parents.