Before leaving his home to fight in the Vietnam War, a young Hawaiian has to decide what to do about his favorite pet pigeon. While deliberating, he's forced to confront the responsibility he bears for his sister's mental instability.

Nana, a twenty-nine year old Ghanaian-American man from Cleveland, tries to repair his relationships with Sassy, his high school sweetheart, and Edwin, his Princeton-educated older brother, when Edwin comes home for the first time in five years.

After a fifteen-year-old girl makes a bet with her father that after high school she will leave home to never return, her father takes her to the train station early one morning and tells her to leave. When she winds up in Los Angeles, she finds her way there, despite the fact that she does not feel free.

Aina Lappi migrates from Finland to Canada to marry her childhood suitor and start a farm, but she takes drastic action when her new life is not at all to her liking. Strong-willed Aina Lappi migrates from Finland to Canada to marry her childhood suitor and start a farm, but she hates the new life and quickly develops a death wish for her husband, who is not at all what she remembered.

A young Black man heads off to college in the American South, unsure of whether he will last the semester. When two students invite him to a church service, he experiences love and heartbreak, both at college and back home.