In the 1930s, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings moves to Florida's backwaters to write in peace. She feels bothered by affectionate men, editors and confused neighbors, but soon she connects and writes The Yearling, a classic of American literature.

A prostitute and a drifter find themselves bound together as they make their way through the rural South, doing what they have to do to survive.

Young Casey comes from a family of racehorse trainers, and his best friend, a foal called Casey's Shadow, may just be a champion.

A fun-loving bachelor woos and weds a secretary, but the bonds of this marriage aren't strong enough to stop his philandering from continuing.

Young and restless Nick Adams, the only son of a domineering mother and a weak but noble doctor father, leaves his rural Michigan home to embark on an eventful cross-country journey. He is touched and affected by his encounters with a punch-drunk ex-boxer, a sympathetic telegrapher, and an alcoholic advanceman for a burlesque show. After failing to get a job as reporter in New York, he enlists in the Italian army during World War I as an ambulance driver. His camaraderie with fellow soldiers and a romance with a nurse he meets after being wounded propel him to manhood.

An aging widower fights family disapproval when he falls in love with a gangster's widow.

A male army deserter and a black male dock worker join forces against a corrupt manager, in a corrupt environment, and as their connection blossoms they must face the oppressive and morally decaying city they live in.

The marital difficulties of four couples living in a southern California housing development become intertwined. Among the unhappy couples are ne'er-do-well Jerry Flagg and his long-suffering wife Isabelle, flirtatious Leola Boone and her sadistic husband Troy, hard-working Herman Kreitzer and his understanding wife Betty, and newlyweds Jean and David Martin.

The oldest son of a loving and strong family of black sharecroppers comes of age in the Depression-era South after his father is imprisoned for stealing food.

Hud Bannon is a ruthless young man who tarnishes everything and everyone he touches. Hud represents the perfect embodiment of alienated youth, out for kicks with no regard for the consequences. There is bitter conflict between the callous Hud and his stern and highly principled father, Homer. Hud's nephew Lon admires Hud's cheating ways, though he soon becomes too aware of Hud's reckless amorality to bear him anymore. In the world of the takers and the taken, Hud is a winner. He's a cheat, but, he explains, "I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner."