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

A Jewish mother wants her daughter to marry well and have a better life, but her husband doesn't seem to care. After her other daughter passes away, she realizes she should not hesitate to make bigger sacrifices.

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.

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.

A young woman is returning to her husband and parents in New York, after having left her husband for a brief affair. As her father drives her home and reminisces on the hard work it took to build a life at their farmhouse, she learns that he hasn't told anyone else she's coming home.

A father facing mental and physical debilitations has his sights set on capturing a drop of sunlight to bring joy to everyone in his small hometown. Despite his good deed, the town finds it necessary to deliberate: is this man an alcoholic, mentally ill, or a criminal?

After struggling to appeal to their state governor, a dysfunctional family anxiously awaits the public execution of a relative. As they wait at home new of the execution, tensions and strife erupt in a dispute over the relative's innocence.

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 she wanders in and out of forests to escape her past and the boy she feels guilty for wanting, a woman gives birth to and abandons a child she thinks of as the physical embodiment of her sin.

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.