In an East Ohio town, a middle-aged man checks into a hotel and explores the various characters, events and surroundings that define small town life.

In a town so small it can hardly be called a town, a black woman serves a rich white family until a series of horrific events causes the single joy in her life to vanish.

An amateur innkeeper struggles to demonstrate her knowledge of urban sophistication to her important guests and fails to grasp the benefits of authenticity to one’s heritage, leading to her mother being better-received by the guests.

When a girl from the city impulsively marries a country boy and moves to his farm, she finds that his family’s dark history of violence will overcome them both if she cannot defeat it first.

An American deserter from World War II stumbles upon a mysterious, isolated village in the French mountains.

A teenaged boy wants to steal from his poor family to buy a girl balloons, but when he gets home his mother falls ill and he must help his family and community pray for her.

A young girl spends her summer mostly alone, weaving in and out of the townspeople's lives and fantasizing about princesses and fairy godmothers

A man leaves his family in NYC to look for a job out West. During the trip, he helps an injured young boy, sleeps with a waitress, and considers leaving his family for good.

In a small rural farm town, a middle-aged poet struggles with aging and finding meaning in his life.

When a northern writer arrives in a rural Tennessee town to better understand the culture for his novel, he is put through a harrowing night by the menfolk who, in the course of an elaborate joke, convince him he has inadvertently killed the son of his hosts.