An employee writes a heartfelt letter to his former boss to argue that he was wrongfully fired. As he lays out his life story, his hidden cowardice and stubborn ambitions paint a different story.

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.

A boy listens to his old friend tell a gruesome tale of his experience in the Civil War before the man’s health takes a turn for the worse.

After a terrible accident, a boy and his family spend the next years in a depression that verges masochism.

After fleeing Germany in the wake of World War II, two immigrants struggle to adjust to a new life of labor and hardship on an American farm.

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.

When a tragedy occurs at a construction site on Good Friday, the devout foreman's religion fails to save him or his men.

A two-week walk across state lines lands one man a dangerous job during the Great Depression.

An aging electrical engineer's intensifying sensation of detachment culminates in a series of debilitating headaches. As he works through fatigue, setbacks, and pain, he finally confronts the source of his desolation.

A Confederate officer begrudgingly fights in the American Civil War until his disastrous last battle helps seal the fate of the war for good. After the war, he constantly repents for his critical mistakes until, decades later, he comes to a shocking revelation about the fateful battle.