It is 1945 and a grown up Anne Shirley returns to Prince Edward Island for an extended visit. She agrees to write a play for a local theatre producer in hopes that it will keep her mind off of her only son who is serving in the Armed Forces overseas. A letter is discovered from the father who abandoned her as a child, bringing up the memories of her early childhood.

After a car accident claims the life of his sister-in-law and leaves his 5-year-old nephew an orphan, a thirtysomething man named Thien leaves Saigon for a trip back to his rural hometown. During his meditative, wandering visit, Thien wrestles with his own agnosticism in the face of others' religious beliefs, summons memories of his long-disappeared brother, and reconnects with a former girlfriend who now lives as a nun at a Christian church and school,...

"It's not a river, it's this river. A hot, motionless afternoon. Enero and El Negro are fishing with Tilo, their dead friend's teenage son. After hours of struggling with a hooked stingray, Enero aims his revolver into the water and shoots it. They hang the ray's enormous corpse from a tree at their campsite and let it go to rot, drawing the attention of some local islanders and igniting a long-simmering fury toward outsiders and their carelessness....

"Being a new mom is murder. Alice didn't think her maternity leave would involve so much, well, murder. Before becoming proud new moms, she and her friends bonded more than members of a prenatal group usually would, as they became accidental amateur sleuths and solved a crime together. Now, with all this behind them and Alice's son Jack somehow already a year old, Alice is keen to finally catch up on some sleep. So when an opportunity presents itself...