Enduring the corruption of their union employment, two young day laborers are respectively drawn to a feminist activist and a vaudeville singer whose experiences reflect an unjust world on the brink of upheaval.

Tensions escalate throughout a single day in a genteel New York City apartment building where a superintendent and his adult daughter spark a crisis involving class distinctions, family bonds and the expectations of privilege.

Two families living on the Maine coast find their way through grief together after a tragic accident takes the lives of a young, newly-married couple, which results in a broken marriage, a bonding between bereaved siblings, and healing in the form of an adopted girl's prodigious violin talent.

When a clerical error allows the admittance of the first African-American girl into a segregated New England prep school, its headmaster is unprepared for a confrontation with the student, a brilliant and intractable fifteen-year-old.