In the 1980s in Summersville, West Virginia, a town with a dying coal industry and a burgeoning tourism industry, a whitewater rafting accident results in the death of a high school aged girl and her father. The tour guide responsible becomes mad with grief and obsession; a year later, when he tells a story of what really happened that day, it's unclear what's reality and what's fiction.

A young boy in 20th-century Illinois observes a woman from afar as she escapes an abusive relationship, gets married, and finds her calling.

In the mid-20th century, a young white boy comes to understand the complexities of interracial relationships as he witnesses the mix of hostility and affection that members of his mother's side of the family feel towards one of her Black friends from high school.

Willie Proudfit sits on his front porch one night and reminisces on his time living a wild and rowdy life out West on the plains, side by side with Native people. After a near-death experience, he comes to recognize the importance of settling down in a place you can call home, with the people you love.

A veteran returns to his hometown in rural North Carolina, hoping to rekindle a romance with the teenage sweetheart that World War I separated him from. Upon their reunion, he realizes that she has stayed the same while he has irreparably changed.

A hard-working Pennsylvania nurse discovers her friend and ex-lover dead in a ditch. She searches his pockets for the money she loaned him, and when she doesn't find it, she drags his dead body around town in a search for the money.

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.

A Black, southern house servant with internalized racism, joins her mistress on a visit to another region, where she observes Black people acting with something she abhors: autonomy.

A young Arizonian boy is kidnapped twice: first, by his father during a custody battle, and second, by a prostitute with something to prove.

A boy in Pennsylvania watches his dad slowly come to the realization that his pre-fatherhood dream of being in the circus will never happen.