In a small fishing town in New Hampshire, a midwife helps a young, unmarried girl--whose family cares more about their reputation than their daughter--through a difficult childbirth.

A writer finds himself entangled in the lives of his college friends, an ex-literature professor and his wife, decades after they graduate. They pursue love and their literary dreams mind a chaotic New York City of the 1960s.

After their band breaks up, a woman and her boyfriend take up an itinerant lifestyle in Idaho. As she wanders through the wilderness and the small farming town, a sense of the inevitable, of the unspeakable, begins to dawn on her: She contemplates murdering her own baby.

A college student uses brutal method acting techniques to rehearse Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull under a tyrannical director. In the process, he and his co-star confront their own misery and arising feelings of love.