A mother struggles to provide her daughter with comfort in an unstable home as her husband constantly searches for new employment.

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.

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.

In a dystopian society, a young widow is placed in a holding facility to spend her days learning home economics until she's chosen to be the wife of a new man.

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.

When an old woman sees her son straining to leave to see the world, she remembers her husband doing the same many years earlier. In a fierce battle pitting love against discovery and adventure, she does her utmost to set him free.

A girl flees her home when her parents want to send her back to her abusive husband.

Terrence and Ruth, a middle-aged couple, move house for a fresh start - but their new house is in disrepair. Ruth contends with sickness, unfulfillment, and her staling marriage while laboriously cleaning it.

A former divorcé runs into an old friend on the streets of New York City. Over a drink, the men speak about an endless cycle of generosity that the friend has wrapped himself up in, while the protagonist considers his comparatively smaller problems.

Amongst problems with her ungrateful children and ex-husband, a middle-aged mother deals with a burgeoning mid-life crisis — until she realizes that she has become miraculously pregnant.