A seventh-grade English teacher copes with the recent death of her father and assigns a memoir that her students love reading. However, their parents question her for her pedagogical choices because of the swear words and provocative topics in the book.

A man who has given everything to his friend's farm equipment business fends off onslaughts personal, emotional, and professional even as the real threat eludes him completely.

A shattered family grieves their missing infant boy's unsolved abduction, and are haunted decades following the crime.

A young girl befriends a city boy one summer and introduces him to her world of Swamp Apes, fairies, and her pet gator Dragon.

Volatile housewife Angelina wavers from incident to incident in her personal life, culminating in a suicide attempt. After suffering a tumble down the church steps, a falling out with her husband, and the death of her beloved dog, volatile housewife Angelina attempts suicide.

A young daughter muses about her lovely life on a cow farm, despite encountering some unsettling moments on the farm grounds.

Following a late-stage divorce, a woman suffering from depression and nostalgic for childhood reflects on her romantic and sexual history and her relationship with her mother.

In a Georgia stream, a determined fisherman sets out to catch his dream fish, a rainbow trout.

When young woman living in the city visits her two elderly aunts in the Montana countryside, she discovers that there's more to her family's past than she had thought.

When a middle-aged Jewish man is captured during the Iranian Revolution, he spends the time in his cell mentally designing an intricate rug. Now freed and living in America with his son, the man struggles to be fully present in his life, though he does develop an interest in his daughter-in-law.