Five days after moving to the quiet town of Manacle, Arizona, a married couple learns of the curse on the town: if you do anyone a favor, they will turn against you.

Asked by his therapist to tell a fable, a man recounts his unenchanting life as a lawyer married to a depressed, drug-abusing woman, with a disabled son he's struggling to raise. By filling his unremarkable story with sorceresses, magic, and true love, he attempts to romanticize a life he's desperate to escape.

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.

In an unlikely encounter, a homeless teenage boy recounts harsh events of his life to a writer. He nonchalantly tells of an employer whose assignments caused him to have permanent physical and mental damage.

After his wife's death, a man struggles with his belief in God and with taking care of his young daughters as a single father. But when someone is brutally murdered in the rural countryside, the man finds both a welcome distraction in bringing justice to the killer and an unlikely ally along the way.

A divorced 16 year old girl reflects on how the sexual trauma she experienced as a child perpetuates in her relationships with men throughout her life, forcing herself to grow up too early and leaving her starved for affection and love.

An elderly woman finds herself surrounded by tragedy.

The gas man falls and breaks his leg at a customer's house, and instead of calling for help, the customer keeps him company for hours and talks to him about his wife's imminent death.

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.

After losing both his wife and son to a car accident, a French prince begins an unlikely friendship with a woman who is a victim of domestic violence.