On a cold winters morning, post World War I, an older couple works on updating their family memory book with the intention of passing it on to the younger generation.

When a mother's memory begins to deteriorate, her daughter catalogs her memories, both the ones she does and doesn't remember.

When a family reunion brings together siblings, they realize they are now more like strangers. At the end of the day, a shocking incident tests their bonds.

Four generations of one family gather for a picture and tensions rise between distant relatives.

Four women–a retired dancer enacting an old dance, a grandmother preparing a birthday dinner for her family, her granddaughter participating in a genetics study, and a researcher quantifying the burden of old memories–all unite under the combined weight of their war-burdened pasts in the contemporary United States.

A father tells a story about his deceased wife and the wild traditions they used to have involving alcohol as well as the disapproval his mother-in-law had about their relationship.

On the day of her mother's funeral, a young woman reminisces about the summers during her childhood spent with her family and friends at their lakeside cabin. As she considers her parents' nontraditional relationship, she also wonders about her own love life.

As an old woman revisits her family's quintessentially American history, she finds a way to respect and love her parents, despite the scandals and tragedies they endured.

After one of her father's notebooks is recovered from an icecap, a woman recalls the love story between her mother, a rural woman who always wanted adventure, and her father, an adventurous explorer who disappeared on a voyage to the Arctic.

A Native American woman reminisces on the story her great-grandfather would tell about running away with her great-grandmother. The woman draws parallels between the story and her own first love.