A son tells a series of stories, most of them about his father and stepfather. As the son describes a robbery that took place at his house in high school and his experiences with his father, a former Jehovah's Witness and current alcoholic, he begins to recall details from his childhood.

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.

A series of vignettes about various sons along a family tree.

A teenager learns how to cope with the premature loss of his father. Through a newly developed relationship with his uncle, he discovers a new version of his father he wasn't privy to during his life.

A middle-aged man tells his son the story of how he once killed a man while driving when he was younger, and another about how his first wife—his wife before son's mother that the son knew nothing about—suddenly passed away.

A bitter divorcee and distant father having an affair with a younger, married woman gets a call that his son has gotten into trouble at boarding school. He travels to the school, where the headmaster says his son, who beat up another student, must transfer. In a series of events that makes him increasingly bitter, he ends up making his son's girlfriend cry in a restaurant.

A father living alone at a horse stable in Massachusetts must reckon with his devotion to Catholicism when his only daughter is the driver in a hit and run.

A man reflects on his complicated summers with his father.

The impact of an absent father emerges in the gruesome stories of a young daughter as her alcoholic mother listens and reflects on the struggles of raising her alone.

A jobless father attempts his best to care for his family, but when he begins to take his young son to play games and music at pubs, the son develops a destructive habit.