A woman returns home to her family having just slept with another man. At dinner, her son gets into an argument with his father about their privilege. As the narrative moves back to the time they spent abroad in Nigeria, Burma and Ecuador, fractures in the family life are revealed.

A working class man who wants his children to have everything their rich friends have purchases "Semplica Girls" — girls formerly living in poverty who sign contracts to hang as ornaments in people's yards — for his older daughter's birthday. When his younger daughter frees the Semplica Girls, the family is plunged into financial disaster.

On the Great Plains, an aging farmer and his wife struggle to sell their produce amid an increase in frozen food manufacturing. The farmer must figure out how to avoid the fate of his neighbors, who were pushed out of business and into welfare dependence.

To earn enough money for college, a high school graduate takes a grueling factory job. He expects his only takeaway from the work to be a paycheck, but a mysterious coworker teaches him about the world and his place in it.

At the dawn of the Great Depression, an aged Black man returns to the Virginia plantation where he was born a slave 99 years ago. His arrival forces the now-destitute family who once owned him to confront their poverty and their racism alike.

A man reflects on his time as a newspaper boy during World War I. Overwhelmed by the horror of the headlines, he must confront harsh truths about morality during wartime.

As an old woman revisits her family's quintessentially American history, she finds a way to respect and love her parents, despite the scandals and tragedies they endured.

An Italian man recounts how his father came into money upon arriving in the United States but spent and then lost it all when his factory caught fire. Despite his Papa’s veritable financial ignorance and dangerous pride, the son asserts none of it was ever his father's fault.

An African American sharecropper is suddenly evicted from his home. When he tries to convince his landlord to stay, his landlord falsely accuses him of threatening violence and throws him into the jaws of the unfair justice system.

A middle-aged American woman living abroad feels alone and out of place, so she seeks company from the local church and the Mothers' Union held there. However, as an atheist, the uptight nature of the church and its members leave the woman feeling unsettled.