As an orphaned Floridian boy grows up to become a mathematician with a healthy family of his own in the 20th century, the memory of his unhappy father lingers, threatening his peace of mind.

After her mother’s death, an imaginative 9-year-old girl bullied by kids at school and by her father, who has a new girlfriend, at home finds comfort only in her dog.

A solitary young hotel clerk finds himself enticed by a mysterious, sophisticated writer. Both desire intimacy, but find their romance obstructed by unspeakable kinds of loneliness.

A young girl unexpectedly finds family in the man who her beautiful but unreliable mother marries.

A young, African-Carib girl is raised by the woman who does her father's laundry after her mother dies in childbirth. Feeling a lack of love in her life, the girl seeks to understand her relationship with her distant father and dead mother.