In 1945 in New Orleans, a fourteen-year-old boy's sister stops secretly seeing a lieutenant and decides to finally marry one of the suitors that her mother has approved for her.

Following the death of her father, a prominent country doctor, a young girl must navigate both her dream of being a music teacher and her position as the eldest child in the family.

A boy and his friends swim in a river near their small hometown. After, the boy watches as his older brother splits off from the group to chat with a girl, and leaves his boyhood behind.

On a flight from Miami to New York, a naval officer returning from war and a mysterious older woman share an intimate moment suspended in the air.

On a farm in upstate New York, a new farm hand meets a girl, but things get complicated when they find out she's a minor.

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.

After he spots a giant catfish in a river in the southern United States, a farmer dedicates ten years of his life to catching it, and leaves his wife to tend the farm.

On Christmas vacation in Florida, a ten-year-old boy and his family take a fishing boat out to the Gulf of Mexico, where the boy's father hopes to catch the first tarpon of the year. While the boy is sensitive and observant, his father looks for ways to push his son to be more strong and brave.

On a business trip to Georgia, a man reconnects with his cousin and spends the night at the his plantation house, where he is reminded of the pleasures and pain of his childhood.

A man from the mountains travels to a desert town once a year to sell his wares. One summer, he has an encounter with white foreigners that leaves him filled with regret and shame.