A blissfully naïve young couple hopes to avoid the fate of the husband's unhappy parents, but as his jealous mother, children, and resentments come between them, the young couple falls into the same pitfalls.

On a visit to his old family farm in the Great Plains, a man recalls his tumultuous relationship with his now-deceased brother. In the process, he must reckon with the continued influence of familial trauma and confront his own ambiguous role in his brother's death.

A woman returns home to her family having just slept with another man. At dinner, her son gets into an argument with his father about their privilege. As the narrative moves back to the time they spent abroad in Nigeria, Burma and Ecuador, fractures in the family life are revealed.

The children in a family grow tired of hosting their middle-aged cousin, but his expulsion brings unexpected strife to the family.

An older mother frets over her third, most troublesome and combative daughter, who may be having an affair.

A middle-aged man begins a sexual relationship with his younger brother's wife after his brother kills three people in a car crash and checks into a psychiatric ward.

Tensions rise and fall as an elderly woman and her family await her grandson’s return from prison. A judgmental relative causes them to rally around the accused.

In an attempt to impress his emotionally distant father, a boy ridicules his mother, who has loved him unconditionally even in his father's absence. Wracked with guilt, he yearns for her forgiveness - only to find that she does not hold it against him.

After experiencing what should have been the most idyllic childhood, four siblings must learn how to assimilate back into the real world.

Two narcissistic adult daughters take exception to their wealthy parents' houseguests, a priest mourning his dead lover, and the strange and frumpy American woman Arleen. But Arleen possesses insight into the family that the girls' own parents lack.