A woman narrates the experience of sending her young daughter off every weekend to stay with her ex-husband and his boyfriend- until things change.

After struggling to appeal to their state governor, a dysfunctional family anxiously awaits the public execution of a relative. As they wait at home new of the execution, tensions and strife erupt in a dispute over the relative's innocence.

An older mother frets over her third, most troublesome and combative daughter, who may be having an affair.

The children in a family grow tired of hosting their middle-aged cousin, but his expulsion brings unexpected strife to the family.

A son tells a series of stories, most of them about his father and stepfather. As the son describes a robbery that took place at his house in high school and his experiences with his father, a former Jehovah's Witness and current alcoholic, he begins to recall details from his childhood.

A somewhat estranged family grapples with the impending death of their mother.

A bitter divorcee and distant father having an affair with a younger, married woman gets a call that his son has gotten into trouble at boarding school. He travels to the school, where the headmaster says his son, who beat up another student, must transfer. In a series of events that makes him increasingly bitter, he ends up making his son's girlfriend cry in a restaurant.

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.

A middle-aged man begins a sexual relationship with his younger brother's wife after his brother kills three people in a car crash and checks into a psychiatric ward.

Two siblings are thrilled at their father’s return to their home after a long week of work and, in their fervor for playtime with him, cause his well-being to take a turn for the worse.