In 1980s Peru, a dyslexic drug trafficker and grade school dropout and a wealthy, famous playwright labeled a terrorist for his play about killing the president form an unlikely relationship as cellmates in the notorious Collectors Prison of San Jacinto. The playwright convinces the men in their block to stage a performance of the play that landed him in jail, bringing a sense of comradery and unity; however, months after his release, he learns that the entire block, including his lover, was killed in the military suppression of a prison revolt.

In the late 90s, a woman moves from New York to LA to teach part time at an art school. As she becomes disillusioned with the art world, she finds a dominant partner and turns to BDSM to ground herself in the empty landscape.

An ex-marine bent on staying the head of his family robs a series of banks to make his mortgage payments until he crashes his car and his three sons--two cops and a prison officer--find the evidence. Rather than go to jail, he shoots himself in the hospital.

In the 1980s in Summersville, West Virginia, a town with a dying coal industry and a burgeoning tourism industry, a whitewater rafting accident results in the death of a high school aged girl and her father. The tour guide responsible becomes mad with grief and obsession; a year later, when he tells a story of what really happened that day, it's unclear what's reality and what's fiction.

In Sheridan, Wyoming during the Red Scare, two migrant workers--an escaped convict and a union organizer--run into trouble with their boss--a corrupt Western movie star who rapes the ex-convict's girlfriend--that places them back on the run. Trouble stemming from the union organizer's reputation as a so-called dangerous Communist follows them to their next job in Montana. In a tense and fast-paced turn of events, the union organizer sacrifices his life to exact revenge on their former boss and the ex-convict and his girlfriend escape to Canada.

An old woman visits the small town where she was once a waitress and remembers how she dated a wealthy college student and built a strong relationship with his intelligent mother. After realizing she didn't want to marry him, she shared a spontaneous, emotionally-intimate drive with his troubled older half-brother, who died by suicide just after.